Students will be taught to sound out the letters in high frequency (heart) words that make the phonetic sound associated with that letter or letter pattern.

Then, students are taught to learn "by heart" the new tricky sound pattern based on the sound it makes in that particular word. 

Students practice learning these words by doing the following things:

1.  Sky write the letters in the air,

2. Trace the letters in the word with their finger on their desk, 

3. Move counters one at a time into sound boxes 

4. Map out the word by spelling the separate sounds into the boxes. Remind them some sounds are spelled with more than one letter. We color the circle above the sound in the box. If there are an irregular sounds that we haven't learned, we will also color in the heart by that sound...as this is a special sound that we must learn "by heart".

5. Say the sounds, blend the sounds together, and read the word.

6. Use the word in a few different sentences to connect the word to real world experiences.