These sets of grapheme cards are intended to support your word study with students. The cards are organised into 2 groups of differing sizes. How you use them will depend on the physical space you have and the way you work with small groups and individuals. 

Large Cards: 1 grapheme to a page

• Display them as a wall frieze 
• Make into a book and have students add more words as examples

Small Cards: 4 to a page 

• Display them as a wall frieze if you have limited space - at student eye level
• Make into little books and have students add more words as examples

Some rote learning can be very helpful. Consider saying the grapheme name, saying the target word and then the sound the grapheme makes in that word. For example, <a> apple / ă /, <a> apron / ā / or <qu> queen /kw/, <qu> queue /k/. Saying the target word prior to the sound the grapheme makes in that word is helpful to reinforce that letters don’t represent sounds in isolation.

The cards are organised into groups of unigraphs, digraphs and trigraphs. Some cards have 2 or 3 options. We have to strike a balance between giving students accurate information while not cognitively overloading them. Thus, as you investigate a new phoneme for a grapheme you might replace your current grapheme card with a new one showing a newly studied pronunciation. Not every pronunciation for a grapheme has been included, as some are rarely used or only encountered in more complex words. The intent is that you include some digraphs along with your studies of unigraphs. <th>, <sh>, <ee> and <ay> can be introduced very early on. 

We can pronounce vowel sounds quite differently depending on our accent. In some of these examples the vowel might be pronounced the same for you. For example you might pronounce the <a> in wash and father the same way, but for others those phonemes are quite different. You might also think of another pronunciation not included. Vowel graphemes can also be reduced and either pronounced as a schwa or zeroed completely. 

Both consonant and vowel graphemes can be unpronounced in some words. Sometimes the grapheme indicates a link to another related word or a story from history. For example, the <g> in sign, and the <l> in salmon. At other times it might be unpronounced because of our accent or how we say the word in a sentence. I have included some examples of unpronounced graphemes. There are many more! I have also included a few obscure graphemes such as <ts> in tsunami or <rrh> in diarrhea (diarrhoea) as they might be useful in generating a discussion about word histories. 

I hope you and your students find these cards not only useful but also bucket-filling with their gorgeous simplicity. I can never express enough gratitude to my illustrator, the very talented Tracy Willcott. It is such a pleasure working with her. 

I also have grapheme and phoneme charts for student reference available as a different purchase option.