High Frequency Words
In Our Classrooms…
- We teach students to decode high-frequency words. These are words that come up frequently in the text that we read. Instead of memorizing words, we will learn them using the heart word method.
- What is the heart word method? With the heart word method, we focus on what parts of a word follow phonics rules, before moving on to the parts of a word that don’t “play by the rules.”
- What about words that do follow the rules? When that happens, children will use their knowledge of letters and sounds to decode (sound out the word). Some words that follow the rules are- at, that, this, and not.
Research Says:
- A sight word is any word that the brain recognizes automatically.
- Proficient readers don’t memorize whole words, even though they look like they do. They rapidly process every letter in a word.
- To establish any word as a sight word, anchoring it in the visual word form requires orthographic mapping.
- Knowing as few as 13 of the 109 most frequently occurring words unlocks 25-50% of all texts for children.
How You Can Help At Home:
- When reading a word that “doesn’t play by the rules”, try pointing out the parts of the word that do.
- Then, tell your child the sounds of the letters that aren’t playing by the rules.
- Studies show that allowing our children time to decode and read these words multiple times, builds a stronger knowledge base.
- Example: said- Said has 3 sounds. 2 of those sounds follow the rules! The only sound that doesn’t is ai making /eh/ sound. So, we say the sounds that do follow the rules and then put a heart above the part that doesn’t (to let them know we must learn that part of the word by heart!)
Want to know more? Check out this detailed article: