Just like in any other profession (I’m sure) there is so much terminology in teaching. We have acronyms for everything and big, fancy words for various processes and procedures. This is all fine and dandy until these terms and their meanings start getting wrapped together. Pretty soon we don’t know which way is up and which definition goes with which word. This is what has happened with the terms high frequency words, sight words, irregular words, and heart words. Though very similar in meaning, each of these terms have a specific purpose and they are not as interchangeable as they seem.
Today we are going to take a look at the definition for these four categories of words and dive into which words fit in each category. We will also take a look at what the teaching process looks like for each category of word.
Which Words are Which?
Sight Words
We hear the term “sight words” frequently, but seldom is used to describe the correct words. Sight words are any word we can read by sight, which as a fluent reader yourself is every word in this post. There is no set list of sight words for students to learn because the goal of all words is to be sight words so our brain has to rely less on on decoding and can focus more on comprehension.
High Frequency Words
High frequency words are words that appear frequently in text. Oftentimes high frequency words are determined from word lists like the Dolch list or the Fry list. If we want to reach fluent reading we need to be able to read these words because (most of these words) are incredibly common. By doing some very causal reading around each of the lists, we learn that they were created out of the “whole-word” approach to reading and that if students could memorize these words then they would be fluent readers (spoiler alert: this is not even close to being correct, but I digress). I will let you do your own research on that because I do not have enough time in this post to dive into it all; HOWEVER, we do know that there are some words that are seen VERY frequently in text and we use the term high frequency words to categories them.
Regular and Irregular Words
Then we have two categories of words that describe all of our words- regular or irregular. Regular words are words that follow an expected pattern. We can look at the phoneme-grapheme correspondences within a word (the sounds and their spellings) or the morphemes (the small, meaningful units of words) to determine this. If we can look at a word and break it apart into chunks to determine how to pronounce or spell it and it relates to words that follow similar patterns, then it is a regular word. Irregular words are words where these pieces of the word do not line up with other words of a similar pattern. Frequently we see irregular words with irregular phoneme-grapheme correspondences meaning that one or more sounds are not represented by expected letters.
The confusion lies in the fact that many high frequency words have one or more irregular parts. This has led to a prevalent idea that high frequency words just need to be memorized because they are irregular. For one thing, not all high frequency words are irregular. There are a lot of high frequency words that have regular spellings. Also, our brains do not retain words for sight word reading by memorizing. In order to retain a large bank of sight words we need to connect the sounds to the spellings and connect the order of those letters to their meaning. A third point, this idea is also connected to the creator of the word lists because they believed if readers just memorized these words, they would become fluent.
Heart Words
This is where the heart word method comes in. Heart words are words that contain an irregular part. The word is broken up into it’s sounds and the regular sounds are labeled as such. The irregular parts are labeled with a heart because that irregular spelling has to be remembered by “heart”. This helps readers to connect the sounds to the spellings (which we need to store words for sight reading) and gives them guidance as they learn that irregular spelling.
The idea is that heart words=irregular words. The heart part is just a method to help teach these words in a way that directly connects to how we learn to read. The problem is that “heart words” have become the new term for “sight words” or “high frequency words” and many regular words are being labeled as heart words.
Classroom Connection
An Overview
Long story short, we want to have very few heart words. If there is a skill we can teach students to help them read a word we want to do that. This is going to look differently in kindergarten than it does in second or third grade, but the overall idea is that if we can teach the skill we need to do just that! Words like me, he, no, so, and go do not need to be heart words because they follow the open syllable rule- if a vowel is at the end of a word or syllable then it often represents it’s long sound. We can simply teach the rule and give students practice with various open syllable words. There is no need to label these words as “heart words” because the pattern is regular.
When it comes to the order in which these words are taught to students, we see all different sequences because each program is different and what each district requires is different. We do know that because the high frequency words are common, we need students to not stumble on them. If a student stumbles on the word “the” then their reading becomes very slow and laborious because of how frequently it is seen. Ideally, this is what the teaching of high frequency words would look like in the classroom. Here are a few tips and tricks to teaching all of these words in the classroom.
Separate the Regular and Irregular Words
Because there are many regular high frequency words, we can simply plug those words into our lessons where their skill is taught. Words like play, may, day, and way can all be taught during our lessons on the ai/ay spelling pattern. We will give students plenty of exposures to these words through various reading and spelling activities. No specific activities need to be done with these words compared to other words in the lesson.
Start with the “Need to Know” Irregular Words
We want to look at irregular words that are common and that students need to know in order to read simple starter sentences when we look for a place to go next. Words like the, was, and to are words students need to begin reading sentences, so this is probably the most logical starting place. As students prepare for more advanced sentence reading then we can add in the more advanced irregular words (think those irregular multisyllabic words).
Always Connect the Sounds to the Spellings
All words, regardless of their regular or irregular spelling patterns, need to be studied and worked with by connecting sounds and their spellings. The word ball can be broken up into three sounds- /b/ /o/ /l/. This is a regular spelling pattern because when an a is followed by an l it almost always represents an /o/ sounds. The word said can also be studied in the same way- /s/ /e/ /d/. The difference is that the /e/ sound in said is not represented in a way we would typically expect. Even with this difference, we are going to continue connecting sounds to spellings with our students (insert the heart word method here)!
Helpful Resources
One book that has a really incredible lay out of high frequency words is Differentiated Phonics Instruction by Wiley Blevins (affiliate link). He has separated the regular words into their phonics skill making it easy for you to embed them into your lesson. He has also labeled the irregular words and helped to determine which words can be taught together. It takes some of the guess work out! I wil say, I do not like the way he introduced the words to students as I prefer to start with sounds and add spellings but that is an easy swap to make.
I always follow the same steps when introducing a new word to my students and I share in on Instagram here! I use this routine for regular and irregular words.
Looking for activities to help you teach those irregular words in the classroom?
Check out my Heart Word Books here– the perfect activity for whole group or small group instruction.
My Heart Word Sound Wall is a helpful tool for bringing in repeated practice for irregular words and helps students to categories words by common irregular sounds.
