One of the things I like about Bob Books is that they have a subtle way of leading us into special sounds, especially the digraphs. In the case of the sh sound, the children learned to read shhh as a sight word back in Set 2 Book 4 (“Bow-Wow!”). One of the reasons I’ve had that on the sight words list all this time, even though they never actually read the word again in the Bob Books is because it is a simple way to lead into learning that sh always makes that shushing sound.

Digraphs, if you recall, are when two or more consonants together have their own special sound. Telling the children this is helpful. Let them know that when s and h are together, they always make their special sound rather than some other sound.

I haven’t revamped our binder system (yet), so for now flip to your digraphs section and write out this chart: 

sh

_____

shut

ship

shock

she

shook

A couple notes on this chart:

1. The word she doesn’t actually follow the rules, so you will need to tell them the word. This is the word they need for the book, and it is technically a sight word, but I like to take the opportunity to introduce the digraph at this point anyhow because I like to take risks like that.
2. This is about as wild as I get.
3. The word shook is a combination of today’s new digraph, plus the blend ook that we learned awhile back. This is a great opportunity to show the children how words are made. A great idea would be to write the word in two places, one being this chart, and the other being the ook chart–simple add this word to the ook list.