High Frequency Word Teaching
On learning how to teach high frequency words
Dear Reader,
The more we learn about how reading works in the brain, the more we rethink the ways we have taught high frequency words, sight words, or snap words in the past. When we first learned to teach these words, we taught students to look at the word, name the letters, and even think about the shape of it, and memorize the way it looks. There was something about this that never sat well with us, because we noticed that many kids didn’t really remember these words and had trouble recalling them to read and write them. Yet, in some ways it made sense, because many of the words, like the and said, were irregular. We thought, maybe you did just have to memorize them…?
Before we write more about how best to teach words like these, let’s take a moment to define some terms:
High frequency words are words that appear a lot (with frequency) in the texts that students read. They may have irregular spellings (different from what we’d expect)— like of or the— or they may have regular phonic relationships— like can or at. These are compiled into lists like the Fry list or Dolch list. (Click here to learn more about these lists.)
Sight word refers to any word that is recognized automatically. For adult readers like us, almost all words are sight words because we can read them with automaticity. (There is a common misconception that sight words need to be learned and memorized by sight. We’ll talk below about how this is not the case!)
Snap words are one curriculum’s (Units of Study) umbrella term for both sight words and high frequency words. This term is drawn from the phrase, “In a snap!”
A few years ago, we first encountered Nell Duke and Heidi Anne Mesmer’s article “Teach Sight Words As You Would Other Words” (link). This way of approaching sight words, by teaching into the sounds the letters make and teaching them in batches rang true to us, and we began to shift the way we talked about sight words with teachers and students.
Let’s chat about these a bit more.
Shift 1: Don’t focus on high frequency words before students have strong letter-sound knowledge. Instead of teaching a lot of high frequency words in the beginning of the year in kindergarten, focus on letters and sounds, concept of word, and initial phonemic segmentation (identifying beginning sounds). Before students have an understanding of the letters and sound and concept of word, teaching many individual words is not helpful--students won’t be able to remember them in the long term (because word recognition is related to mapping letters and their sounds). This also means that for any student, it’s not helpful to focus on learning high frequency words if there isn’t a strong foundation in letter sounds.
Here’s what Heidi Ann Mesmer says in Letter Lessons and First Words: “Based on research, instead of having children memorize these ‘sight words’ holistically, teachers should not give high frequency sight words heavy instructional attention until solid letter-sounds knowledge (as well as concept of word and initial phonemic segmentation) is established. (Note: Some high-frequency words can and should be taught while children are acquiring letter-sounds. In the course of reading charts, doing interactive writing, and engaging in print referencing activities, it makes sense to teach a handful of useful words like the. However, systematic instruction using high-frequency lists is best given once students have solid letter knowledge.)
Shift 2: Teach the letter-sound relationships, even in irregular words. With words like said or was, where some of the letters don’t match the sound we expect them to represent, we used to think that kids had to ‘memorize’ the whole word because a part (or two) of it was irregular. In fact teaching students in some words there are PARTS that are irregular and parts that are regular allows students to just have to remember one part vs. the whole word (Kilpatrick, 2015). So, for example, with the word said, you’d acknowledge the regular parts — the /s/ sound is represented with the letter s, the /d/ sound is represented with the letter d — and then point out the tricky part, that the short /e/ sound is represented with the letters ai.
In Equipped for Reading Success, David Kilpatrick notes, “Researchers now know that we store irregular words in a similar manner to the way we store regular words. We use the normally performing letter-sound combinations to ‘anchor’ those irregular words in memory. Researchers call this a ‘phonological framework,’ which means noticing and anchoring the stable or regular letters and phonemes within the word. Then, the reader makes a mental note of the irregular element of the word.”
We think the concept/process of “Heart Word Magic” taught by Really Great Reading is a nice way to teach these ideas. Check out these videos to see how they do it: link.
Shift 3: Teach high frequency words in patterns, including patterns in irregular words. Instead of teaching these words in isolation, teach that they follow a pattern. So instead of teaching was by itself, you might explain that it’s like is, his and has (Duke and Mesmer, 2016). This allows students to store these words in the same way they store other words, by their sounds and letters.
Here are some articles/books we referenced above, and some others we think are good to read:
A New Model for Teaching High-Frequency Words by Linda Farrell, Michael Hunter, Tina Osenga (link)
Teach Sight Words As You Other Words by Nell Duke and Heidi Anne Mesmer (link)
Equipped for Reading Success by David Kilpatrick (link)
Letter Lessons and First Words by Heidi Anne Mesmer (link)
Our next newsletter will offer some suggestions as to how to choose the words you might teach.
Let us know what you think of these shifts, how do they affect your teaching and plans for the upcoming school year?
See you next week!
Lizzie and Marie