What's the deal with sight words, high frequency words, and heart words?
Let’s start with defining each one...
Sight words are words we can recall instantly from memory, regardless of whether they are phonetically regular or irregular.
High-frequency words are words we see the MOST in texts. Some can be sounded out and some can’t. We want these words to become sight words. Examples: I, the, a, to, said, have, you, from, want
Heart words are an instructional strategy for teaching sight words and high-frequency words. With the heart word method, you focus on what parts of a word do work, before moving on to the parts of a word that don’t “play by the rules.” These might be parts that either do not follow the rules OR have a spelling pattern not learned yet. These are the parts we need to know by heart.
Ok, Megan that's awesome but what does that mean for me??? Which ones do I teach?
Well… here’s the deal: we want all high-frequency words to BECOME sight words! But a lot of them are phonetically regular (meaning we can sound them out and they follow the rules of English). This means that they don’t need any special introduction, just encourage your child to sound it out. Example, the word “but” can be decoded if students know the sound for b, u, and t.
But for the words that DON’T follow the rules (and you would be surprised that there are not that many) and the words with advanced spelling patterns (but we see a lot!), you can use the heart word method.
Memorizing sight words is a cognitive overload and not effective! Instead, by focusing on how sounds and letters work we let our learners know that English is a language with rules that help us learn to read!
How can you help?
When reading a word that “doesn’t play fair,” try pointing out the parts of the word that do make sense! Then, simply tell your kiddo the sounds of the letters that aren’t playing by the rules.
I focus on what parts of a word do work before moving on to the parts of a word that don’t make sense OR a learner has not practiced yet.
Count the sounds in the word
ex: said has 3 sounds s/ai/d
Figure out what sounds make sense!
said has 2 sounds that make sense
Figure out what sounds don’t make sense and draw a heart under those sounds
ai says /eh/ in said
This is the part we have to learn by HEART
Check out my What Are Heart Words? Blog To read more ways to help your kiddo! ❤️
