Does your reading program require you to teach “sight words,” “heart words,” “trick words,” “red words,” “high-frequency words,” or “irregular words”? Are you trying to follow the science of reading research by having your students orthographically map these words instead of asking them to memorize the words by sight? Bravo! And this blog post is for you, so settle in and get ready to take some notes.
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First, let’s talk about “sight words.”
Sight word: Any word that is instantly recognized, whether it is regularly or irregularly spelled. Can and said might be sight words for an early reader. Amoxicillin and meteorologist are likely sight words for you.
High-frequency words: words that appear most often in print. Think of the Dolch and Fry word lists.
Irregular words: Words with one or more irregular features, such as the ai that represents the short e sound in the word said.
Heart words, trick words, and red words are essentially the same idea with different names: Some part of the word is tricky (whether it’s irregularly spelled or the letter/sound connection has not been taught yet) and that tricky part has to be memorized “by heart.” If the letter/sound connection is not yet taught (such as the ou in the word out), that part must be memorized for now but it will be considered decodable once the diphthong ou has been taught. On the other hand, the ai that represents the short e sound in the word said is irregular and will always need to be memorized.
Ultimately, we want all words to become “sight words,” whether they are regularly spelled or irregularly spelled, common or uncommon. Knowing a lot of sight words essentially means that the reader can recognize many words accurately and automatically, which supports fluent reading of connected text.
What are some ways to teach regularly-spelled words so that they become sight words?
In a previous post, I talked about ways to teach the regularly-spelled high-frequency words in a way that aligns with the science of reading research. This method also allows you to align your sight word instruction with your phonics instruction. The big idea is to teach the high-frequency words by word family. For example, when your students are working on CVC words, you can teach them the Dolch and Fry words from the following word families: –at, -an, -in, -it, -ip, -op, -ot, and –ug. More than 30 high-frequency words can be made with these word families.
What about irregularly-spelled sight words?
When words do not follow known phonics patterns but we want our readers to know them quickly and automatically, we need a different strategy. Consider the word they. It’s very common in early reading materials but it has a tricky letter/sound connection in it. The th represents the expected sound, but the ey represents the long a sound.
Can’t kids just memorize these kinds of words by sight?
It’s important to know that we do not memorize words by sight with visual memory. Rather, words are memorized through the process of orthographic mapping, which requires the reader to make connections between a word’s sounds, meaning, and spelling. If you’re unfamiliar with the concept of orthographic mapping, here’s an article from Voyager Sopris Learning that breaks it down.
According to Kilpatrick, “Most ‘irregular’ words have only one irregular letter/sound connection. Only a tiny fraction of ‘irregular’ words are off by more than one phoneme… only a few of these rare exception words happen to be words children need to learn early in their careers.”
If you feel tempted to have your students memorize a word by sight because there is one irregular letter/sound connection, remember that the rest of the word is likely decodable. Making connections between the regularly-spelled parts of the word will make it much easier for students to recall the irregularly-spelled part of the word.
Let’s consider the word said. The letters s and d represent the sounds /s/ and /d/, respectively. Knowing this makes it much easier for a student to tackle the irregularly-spelled part of the word because they will realize that there is less to remember.
If we don’t want to tell our students to memorize the whole word by sight, what can we do instead?
There are several strategies we can use to help promote the orthographic mapping process. There are three basic ideas to keep in mind and then I will also share more specific strategies. Here are the three basic ideas:
- Continue helping your students build a strong base of letter-sound knowledge and phonemic awareness skills. “If a student is not attuned to the sounds within oral words, there is no efficient way for printed words to become familiar letter strings” (Kilpatrick, 2016).
- If a word can be sounded out, sound it out.
- If there’s an irregular element in the word, sound out the decodable parts and talk about the irregular part.
What are some more specific strategies I can use for teaching those tricky sight words?
- Introduce the word orally first
- Direct mapping
- Mnemonic pronunciations
- Teach similar words together
- Look up the history or etymology
- Heart Word Magic
Introduce the Word Orally First
Introducing the word orally will attune the student to the individual sounds within the word before dealing with those tricky letters. First, say the word and have students repeat it. Discuss the meaning and how it can be used in a sentence. Help the students discover how many syllables it has. Help the students discover each sound by segmenting the phonemes (individual sounds). Ask questions like, “What’s the last sound you hear in give? What is the middle sound you hear?”
Sometimes we introduce a word that’s hard to explain, particularly if you have students with limited English proficiency. Let’s say you want to teach the spelling of the word of. Part of the orthographic mapping process involves making a connection to the word’s meaning. How do you explain the meaning of the word of and how to use it in a sentence? My favorite resource for those hard-to-explain words is the book Words by Christoph Niemann.
Each page illustrates one of the Fry words in a funny or unique way. When I show my students an image, their hands shoot up because everyone wants a turn to use the word in a sentence! My copy is well-worn because of how often I use it.
Here’s part of the Amazon product description: “More than 300 words inspired by Dr. Edward Fry’s list of sight words are paired with striking and playful illustrations by internationally renowned designer and artist Christoph Niemann. [He] has illustrated each word with a picture that challenges readers to make connections and puzzle out meaning in a playful way.”
Direct Mapping
Direct mapping is a technique used to help students make connections between the individual sounds within words and the corresponding letters. It’s a perfect next step after introducing the word orally. The teacher asks questions that will help students develop essential skills for successful word recognition. Here’s how to do it:
First, introduce the word orally (see above). Guide students to segment each sound. Next, display the word. Ask questions that guide students to analyze the letter/sound connections. Asking questions about the sounds out of order forces students to segment the sounds instead of guessing.
- “What letter makes the /d/ sound in said?”
- “What letter makes the /s/ sound in said?”
- “What letters make the /ĕ/ sound in said?”
If there is a blend in the word, you can direct attention to the whole blend or single letters: “Which letters make the /pl/ sound in play? Which letter makes the /l/ sound in play?”
You do not need to call attention to every letter and sound, but definitely address any irregular or tricky parts, such as letter combinations your students have not learned yet.
Related product: My Look Alike Words to Promote Orthographic Mapping resource teaches you the direct mapping technique and uses similarly-spelled words to help your students break the habit of using the first letter sound to make a guess.
Mnemonic Pronunciations
Using mnemonic pronunciations means that you pronounce the word the way it is spelled to help recall the tricky portion. Pronounce from to rhyme with prom. Pronounce Wednesday as Wed-nes-day. When you say the word answer, pronounce that /w/ sound.
Teach Similar Words Together
Teaching the spelling of the word could? May as well include should and would! Teach some and come together, or to, do and who. See the image below for more words that can easily be taught together.
Look Up the Etymology of the Word
The history of a word might explain its spelling and help children make sense of the tricky part(s). I frequently use the Online Etymology Dictionary to demystify words. Here are some words with tricky spellings that can be explained by the etymology. The information below comes from the Online Etymology Dictionary.
The word one was originally pronounced to rhyme with lone, which means that it actually used to be spelled the way it was pronounced! Notice the connections between spelling, pronunciations, and meanings of the words one, once, lone, alone, and lonely. These connections can help your students orthographically map the words with more ease.
In Old English, two was pronounced twa. Notice that two, twelve, and twenty all start with tw- and all involve the number two. Again, knowing these connections will increase the chances that your students wi orthographically map the words for permanent storage and automatic recognition.
Heart Word Magic
I do not personally use Heart Word Magic because I prefer to color-code words with my students. My strategy is similar to The Dyslexia Classroom’s Color-Coding Method. I know that the Heart Word Method is very popular so I could not write this post without mentioning it! Click the link to learn more.
Are you ready to make some changes to your high-frequency “sight word” word instruction?
I hope these strategies have given you some practical ideas to align your sight word instruction with the science of reading research. Please let me know if you try any of them and how it went!
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Sources
Kilpatrick, David A. Essentials of Assessing, Preventing, and Overcoming Reading Difficulties. Hoboken, New Jersey, Wiley, 2015.
Kilpatrick, David A. Equipped for Reading Success: A Comprehensive, Step-By-Step Program for Developing Phoneme Awareness and Fluent Word Recognition. Syracuse, NY, Casey & Kirsch Publishers, 2016.
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