In our class, students no longer learn to read via sight words.  This is because recent research has indicated that incorporating high-frequency "sight words" into our phonics instruction is considered better than teaching children to memorize a word.

In this approach, students leverage their phonemic awareness to decode the consistent elements of these words, and subsequently focus on memorizing the irregular sounds within them. This technique is commonly referred to as "Heart Words."

For example, consider the word 'said'; the letters 's' and 'd' both make their correct sounds, but the "heart part" (the part you need to know by heart) is the 'ai'. As such, we now teach our kids the heart part of certain irregular and frequent words rather than asking them to memorize it.

Please have a look at the Heart Word Magic website for more information and examples. 

Afterwards, look at the Reading! webpage for the alphabet we use in class.