The Many Sounds of Ough

Though, through, tough, cough, bought, bough: sort by sound, and read them in sentences.

Warm-up, learn, try it together, practice, then a quick check. About 15 minutes.

What children learn in Level 3

Here's the trickiest letter team in English: o u g h. It can make six different sounds!
It rhymes with go in though and dough. It rhymes with too in through.
It rhymes with puff in tough, rough, and enough. It rhymes with off in cough.
It rhymes with caught in bought, thought, and brought. And it rhymes with cow in bough, a branch of a tree.
So how do you read it? Try a sound, and check that it makes a real word that fits the sentence. We walked through the tunnel. Through!
Through, though, thought, and tough look alike, so read them slowly. One letter changes the whole word.
Your turn! Sort these words by how ough sounds.

Georgia's K-12 English Language Arts Standards:

4.F.P.4.a — Decode and encode words with graphemes that represent multiple letter-sound correspondences.
4.F.F.1.a — Increase sight word vocabulary by reading regularly and irregularly spelled words in isolation and context with accuracy and automaticity.