Split digraphs: the Year 1 stumbling block

A split digraph is two letters making one vowel sound, with a consonant in between — a-e in “cake”, i-e in “bike”, o-e in “bone”. Year 1 children meet them late, so they’re the single biggest stumbling block in the Phonics Screening Check. Section 2 leans heavily on them.

A digraph is two letters making one sound. Easy enough. sh in “ship”. oa in “boat”. A split digraph is the same idea — two letters making one sound — but with a consonant between them. The classic five are:

• a-e in cake, snake, shape
• e-e in these, Pete
• i-e in bike, time, hide
• o-e in bone, home, rope
• u-e in cube, tube, cute

Why are they hard?

Two reasons. First, the rule is non-local: your child has to look ahead to the silent e at the end before they know what the vowel sounds like. “cake” without the final ewould be “cak” with a short-a. The brain has to scan, hold the vowel sound in working memory, then commit. That’s a real cognitive load for a five-year-old.

Second, schools usually teach split digraphs in the spring of Year 1, which means children meet them just months before the screening check. The repetitions haven’t built up the way they have for, say, sh or ai.

How to teach split digraphs at home

1. Make the silent-e visible

When your child meets a word like “snake”, physically point at the final e first and say “e at the end means the a says its name”. Then point back at the a. With repetition, the eye learns to scan to the end before committing to the vowel sound.

2. Pair real and pseudo-words

Say “snake” then show blane. Same pattern, no meaning. The pseudo-word forces decoding rather than recognition. Our targeted practice tab does this automatically — pick the GPC and you’ll get a 10-word mix. (See our alien-words guide for why pseudo-words matter so much.)

3. Don’t over-correct

If your child reads “snake” as “snak”, say “look at the end — what does that etell us?” Wait. Let them self-correct. Don’t say the right answer immediately; the brain learns from the moment of resolution.

Common mistakes

• Reading the silent e. “Sn-a-k-e” with four sounds. The fix: point at the e and say “this one is silent — it just changes the vowel”.
• Defaulting to the short vowel. “Snak” instead of “snake”. The fix: always scan to the end of the word before committing.
• Confusing split digraphs with vowel digraphs. “Hide” misread as “hied”. The fix: lots of pattern exposure — pseudo-words help here because they can’t be guessed.

How much practice?

A focused week — 10 split-digraph words a day — typically moves a Year 1 child from “guessing” to “consistently correct”. Then keep them in the daily-session rotation through to test day so the skill stays warm. Our 7-week preparation plan blocks out a full week (Week 4) on split digraphs specifically.

Split digraphs in the 2026 check

The 2026 Phonics Screening Check sits Monday 8 June to Friday 12 June 2026. In a typical recent paper, between four and seven of the 40 words contain a split digraph — most concentrated in Section 2. The 2024 paper in particular leant hard on a-e and o-e. Because the pass mark is 32 out of 40, missing a handful of split-digraph words won’t fail your child on its own — but if split digraphs are your child’s sticky area, they tend to be sticky in clusters, and a child who gets one a-e wrong often gets the next two wrong too. That’s why a focused week works.

Want to drill the five split digraphs one at a time? Open the app for a free 5-minute session — no signup, no email.