Speed Words are included in every Little Learners Love Literacy® decodable book and recently the LLLL team have created PDF versions of every Speed Words list for teachers to print and use for a range of activities. Here's everything you need to know about this simple resource ...
Q: What are Speed Words?
A: Speed Words are a list of words that have been used in a decodable book. The words all include the focus phoneme-grapheme correspondence or teaching focus for that book. Speed Words provide an additional decoding opportunity after children finish reading the book to support the development of single-word reading fluency.
Q: Where can I find Speed Words?
A: In the back of every Little Learners Love Literacy® decodable book:
In the Free Downloads area of the Little Learners Love Literacy® website to download and print out:
Q: Why are Speed Words included in every book?
A: Children have to decode a word several times to 'map' it in their brain. Once words are mapped children can recall them automatically. Speed Words provide a valuable opportunity to practise decoding words again which will help children to map them to their long-term memory for automatic recall. The more mapped words children have, the more fluent their reading will become.
For some children this process of mapping can take much longer - particularly for dyslexic children. Slowly decoding the same words over and over again can look like a struggle and be tough to watch. We highly recommend reading this short blog by Speech Pathologist Alison Clarke called "The sweaty sounding-out stage builds reading muscle", which perfectly describes this process and the value in it. To give children the best chance of success, we should give them as much decoding practice using their learnt letters and sounds as possible!
Ways to use Speed Words
Independent decoding - children point to a word and decode it
(tracking with their finger under the word as they sound out and blend to read it). The aim is become automatic, pointing to words and reading them with increasing speed - as appropriate for the child. Some children may need to continue to sound out the words.
- Child reads the Speed Words with an adult - the adult points to the words in a random order using an icy pole stick and the child decodes the words. Adult sets the pace at a speed that suits the child's abilities.
- Child ticks off words as they read them correctly (using the PDF version of the Speed Words).
Fluency pairs/partner reading - children read Speed Words to their partner. They can read the entire page to their partner and swap, or they can take turns to read a word each.
- Pair students either by same reading ability, or by pairing more advanced readers with struggling/developing readers.
- Establish a routine for fluency pairs so that children know how to go about paired reading (i.e. will they read out loud together or will they take turns to read? When will they swap? Who reads first?). Model the routine before asking children to do it themselves. Consider what children need to do when their partner reads a word incorrectly. To support children with this routine, you could allocate each child a fruit - say, grapes or oranges. That way the child will know what to do when you say "grapes read first today". You can download some fruit images from the Milo's Teacher Resource book.
Sorting games -
Start by printing the relevant Speed Words sheet and cut into cards.
Specific sorting activities are described in the 'How to enjoy this book' notes in the back of the Little Learner decodable books ...
- At lower levels, children could sort words by the medial vowel sound in 5 piles (or however many vowels they have
learnt so far).
- At higher levels, sort the words into graphemes representing the focus phoneme, e.g ow or ou words.
Writing - lucky dip and dictation
- Cut the printed Speed Words into cards and place the cards face-down on the table.
- Children work with their partner. One child picks up a card and reads it to their partner. The other child repeats the word aloud before writing it.
- Children check the spelling together comparing the card with the child's attempt and make corrections as necessary.
- Children swap roles and continue until all the words have been written down.
Alternatively, teachers or parents could use Speed Words for quick dictation activity. The adult reads a word from the list, children then say the word aloud before writing it down without any prompts.
Teachers may be interested in exploring the Read and Grab Word Games, which also help children to build single-word reading fluency.
We feel confident that teachers will find 101 ways to use the Speed Words sheets - please share your ideas in our Facebook group!
Quick Download Links:
Download all speed words from the Free downloads page of our website