Blends and digraphs get taught together and are not the same thing. Telling them apart is most of what this sheet is for.
Hear both, or hear one new sound
In a blend, the two consonants keep their own sounds and you hear both, fast.
Say STOP slowly and the s and the t are both in there. Same with the f and l in
FLAG, the b and r in BRICK.
In a digraph, two letters make a sound neither of them makes alone. The sh
in SHIP is not an s followed by an h. It is a new sound with its own spelling,
and stretching it out does not break it into parts.
The test children can apply themselves is the stretch. Say the word slowly and
listen for whether the pair comes apart. STOP pulls into s-t. SHIP does not
pull apart at all, because there was only ever one sound there.
Not “can you say the letters separately.” Anybody can say s and h on their own. The question is how many sounds the word contains.
What is on the sheet
Digraphs: SHIP, SHOP, SHELL, SHARK, SHEEP, CHIN, CHOP, CHAIR,
CHEESE, CHURCH, THIN, THICK, THUMB, THREE, THINK, WHEN, WHALE,
WHEEL, WHITE
Blends: BLACK, BLOCK, BLEND, CLAP, CLOCK, CLOUD, FLAG,
FLOWER, GLASS, GLOVE, PLANT, PLATE, SLIDE, SMILE, SNAKE, SPOON,
STAR, STOP, SWIM, TRAIN, TREE, DRUM, DRESS, GRASS, FROG
Both kinds share every grid, which is what lets you run the sorting activity below. If you are introducing one pattern rather than reviewing, a single-sound sheet from the craft page works better.
Sort them after the search
The activity worth the extra five minutes:
Once students have found their words, have them split the list into two columns: words where you hear both letters, and words where the two letters make one new sound.
They will apply the stretch test and get most of them right. The argument
happens at THREE, where a digraph and a blend sit on top of each other: th
makes one sound, then the r keeps its own. Hardest word on the sheet to classify, and the one they remember.
The wh problem
WHEN, WHALE, WHEEL and WHITE are on the sheet, and in most American
accents the wh sounds exactly like w. When and wen are identical.
This matters because a child cannot hear their way to the right spelling. There
is no sound telling them to write the h. They have to know which words take wh,
which makes these closer to sight words than phonics.
Say so out loud. A student who is trying to hear a difference that is not there will conclude their ears are broken, when the honest answer is that the spelling outlived the sound.
Which grid size
The 10x10 for first and second grade. These words run four to six letters, so the 8x8 holds relatively few at a time, and the larger sizes add reversed placement (reversed words are the wrong tool at this age).