Heart Words

Sight words are common words that children are encouraged to recognize instantly without needing to sound them out.  Some of these words don't follow standard phonics rules, making them difficult to decode.  We often call them, "Heart Words" because they contain irregular spellings, making them challenging to decode using standard phonics rules.  These are the words students need to learn "by heart" because their irregular parts don't follow typical sound-letter correspondences.  For example, in the word "said," the letters "ai" produce the short /e/ sound, which is uncommon and doesn't align with standard phonetic patterns.  Some other examples include:  the, come, was, where.  

In our classroom, we will help students identify both the regular and irregular parts using a heart symbol to emphasize the need for memorization.  This method allows students to apply their phonetic knowledge to the regular portions while recognizing and remember the exceptions.  By focusing on heart words, we aim to improve reading fluency and comprehension, enabling students to recognize these common yet irregular words effortlessly.   

One strategy for learning sight words is Orthographic Mapping.  Students map out the sounds they hear in a word and write the letters for that sound. Below is a video to demonstrate this strategy.