Heart words

Learn all about Heart Words: What they are, the most effective ways to teach them, and tons of FREE heart word resources!

Using what we know about Science of Reading, this post explains how to build sight word mastery by mapping out words.

Learn all about Heart Words: What they are, the most effective ways to teach them, and tons of FREE heart word resources!

I mentioned in my last post that I am taking time this summer to really delve into the science of reading, making plans to adapt my instruction this fall to better reflect what research shows about how children learn to read. One big shift when aligning instruction with the science of reading is in the area of sight words or high frequency words. Many of us have been told that these words are not decodable and that students simply need to memorize them, leading to well-intentioned drilling…

A Structured Literacy Blog for Educators

As an early elementary teacher, you have probably heard about sight words, but have you learned about heart words? Heart words are high frequency words that your K-2 students will learn about phonetic sounds and sounds that aren’t phonetic. My early elementary students love learning heart words with multisensory activities. By teaching your students how to use phonics to decode the heart words, they will understand the irregular parts. Check out how to map words with word mapping mats!

Are you new to Science of Reading and wondering how to start teaching heart words? This post will walk you through my step by step process to teach you the difference between sight words, heart words and high frequency words, and how to teach heart words in your kindergarten, first, or second grade classroom so they actually stick. Teaching heart words doesn’t have to be complicated. Grab my step by step process and free heart word printables here.

Do You Want to Dramatically Accelerate Your Kindergartners’ Writing Proficiency? Fluency with high-frequency “heart word” sentences is your key to success!

Heart Words: These are words that don't follow standard phonetic rules and must be memorized. These words need to be recognized by sight rather than sounded out and hence learn by heart. Irregular Sight Words: These are also called as common words that don’t fit typical spelling patterns, making them tricky to sound out. Examples include "the" and "was." Recognizing these words by sight helps build reading fluency.