Blends and 4h Digraphs Definitions:
– Blends are 2 or 3 consonants whose sounds blend together, yet retain each individual sound.
– 4h Brothers are the digraphs ch, th, wh, sh. Each digraph makes a unique single sound.
– Digraphs are two letters that make one sound like -ng, -nk, kn, gn, ph, wr, -mb, -mn

– Trigraphs are three letters representing one sound like -dge, -tch

The Blends and 4h Brothers (th, sh, ch, wh) need to be recognized automatically.  Learning the blends also helps students begin to read in chunks (rather than letter by letter).  This will help later when breaking big words into syllables. Add the 4h brothers to the letters in the sounds pack you are practicing every day! 

Teaching Videos:

Written Stories:

• Written Story: 4h Brothers as told in Teaching Video
• Written Story: AE and the Blends as told in Teaching Video

• 4h Brothers Story Pictures from Teaching Video
• 4h and ph posters
• AE and the Blends Story Pictures used in Teaching Video
• Vowel Protectors Poster

For the formatting of PowerPoints to be correct, click FILE, then DOWNLOAD, and download in Microsoft PowerPoint.

• PowerPoint: 4h Brothers from Teaching Video
• PowerPoint Practice 4h and Reading in Chunks The How-To Video: Blends for Practice Blends Reading in Chunks below also applies to this PPTX.
• PowerPoint: Practice 4h Brothers flash words. In this PowerPoint the 4h words are flashed.  This helps students learn to take a quick look and make an image of the word in their heads.  See Flashing Words for more information on this strategy.  Download the PowerPoint and use the up and down arrows to  arrows to go through it.
• PowerPoint: Practice Blends and Reading in Chunks  The How-To Video: Blends shows how to use the PowerPoint.  Download the PowerPoint in order for it to work and be formatted correctly.
• PowerPoint: All Syllable Types with Practice (Directions in notes section on each slide) Use only slides that are relevant to where you are in the steps.

TEACH ALONG THE WAY ●●●

Teach and add the relevant sounds (th, sh, ch, wh. -dge, -ng, and -nk) from the Big Sounds Pack to daily practice.

th has 2 sounds: The sound it makes in “thinker” is not voiced, and the sound it makes in “then” is voiced. If you put your fingers on your throat you can feel the vibrations when a sound is voiced.

-ng, -nk: When followed by g or k the n sounds moves to the back of the throat. This includes common chunks -ing, -ong, -ung, -ink, -onk, -unk as well as long vowel cheater chunks –ank and -ang.

-dge, -tch: Vowel Protectors make sure the vowel says it’s sound. Vowel Protectors -dge (bridge) and -tch (catch)  come after a short vowel in one syllable words.

Other letter combinations with practice on this page (also in Teach Along the Way ➡︎ Unique Sounds & Situations) are kn, gn, ph, wr, -mb and -mn.

As the learner is working on the sounds for the 4h brothers and the blends, some teachers also choose to begin teaching Magic e with only cvc words!

When practicing lists:

– First highlight the 4h digraph or the blend while saying its sound in these lists.  This way the learner is training their brain to quickly identify those letters together as a unit.  (If this work is difficult, the learner may choose different colors for different letter combinations, for example highlighting every /ch/ blue.

– Then go through and say the sounds of the highlighted 4h brother or digraph, pause, say the rest of the word, and then say the word as a whole.  (/sh/, /ip/, /ship/) This helps the learner train their brain to see words in chunks. 

– Finally go through the highlighted list reading the whole words! Once reading words with blends and digraphs becomes easy and quick, skip the steps and just practice with lists, games, small books etc!

Map Sounds to Letters

Map the sounds in the word to the letter(s) representing the sounds, even if it is not a letter combination that has been taught yet. Only an unusual sound/letter combination needs to be remembered “by heart.” Mapping the sounds to the letters is how we remember what words look like. See example below:

Be sure to reinforce what you know and are learning about words, for example:
Schwa Sound: Any vowel might say /ŭ/. Point out that this happens in many common words like: the, of, was, some, from…

KEY:
K-1 Beginning
1-2 Growing
Intervention/Challenge

Bundle: Multiple types of materials (games, activities, stories…) bundled together.
Pack: Multiple pieces of the same type of material, for example a pack of books.

Directions for everything else:

More on the Directions Page

• Highlighting Lists
• Working with Flashcards
• Flashing Words with flashcards
• Games with Picture Cards
• Games with Words/Phrases on Game Board
• Game I Have, Who Has
• Game Bang!
• Game Bingo
• Spelling help found on the Spelling Page in the Teach Along The Way section
• Small Book 8 page Assembly Directions 
• Small Book 4 page Folding Directions
• Syllable Sort Directions
  • Syllable Sort Headings
  • Strategy for Splitting Syllables

Sample Bundle