How to teach sight words (or golden words or magic words or me-ow words or top 100 words, however you may have previously referred to them) is a regularly appearing thread on our Facebook group.
"What activities do you do with them?" "How do you keep it interesting?" "What do you do if the students aren't getting it?"
This blog will discuss how to teach the Little Learners Love Literacy® Heart Words following our explicit teaching routine and the principles of ‘revise, teach, practise, apply, assess’.
Before proceeding, you may be interested in reading our blog, What are Heart Words?
REVISE
Alongside your Chitter chatter chants, Speed Sounds and Speed Words, regularly revise previously taught Heart Words in your daily review.
The revision routine should be snappy so you don’t need to review every Speed Sound and every Heart Word every day. A good rule of thumb is to keep those just learnt, and a few from previous stages that you rotate in and out of your deck to strengthen long term memory.
TEACH
Heart Words need to be explicitly taught. Even though children cannot fully decode Heart Words when they first appear in the books, it is still useful to break Heart Words into sounds when you teach them. By mapping phonemes to graphemes children will have a much stronger chance of recalling these words.
We do not teach them by memorising shape of the word or by any other strategies.
You can split the word into phonemes and explain which bit is the unknown bit; it may be irregular or not yet taught in the sequence. Where children know the GPC, we acknowledge that, for example, /m/ in my. Then we then give them the unknown bit - you could mark this grapheme with a heart if you like. At the early stages, if all the GPCs are unknown that’s fine too, we still segment them. Our brains must connect with the spelling of the word in order to remember it effectively.
Follow the steps below to explicitly teach a new Heart Word:
Step 1: Hear and say the word.
My Turn: Teacher shows the word and says the word.
Use a flashcard or write the word on the board, then say the word. Say the word in a sentence and repeat the word.
Your Turn: Children say the word.
The children say the word together, with a choral response.
Choral Response is a teaching tool that provides opportunities to check understanding and promote knowledge retention. The teacher provides a prompt and the whole class respond in unison.
Step 2: Segment the word.
My Turn: The teacher segments the word.
The teacher segments the word into phonemes, using spelling fingers.
Your Turn: Children segment the word.
The teacher picks a couple of non-volunteers to segment the word.
Step 3: Decode the word.
My Turn: Teacher decodes the word.
Decode the word pointing to the graphemes. Give children any non-decodable phoneme-grapheme correspondences OR explain the morphology/ etymology of the word.
See teacher’s notes for direction.
Your Turn: Children decode the word.
Children decode chorally, then the teacher picks 2-3 non-volunteers to decode the word.
Step 4: Write the word.
My Turn: Teacher models writing the word.
Teacher segments the word and writes a grapheme for each sound. Teacher blends to say the word. For highly irregular words write the word and say it - referring to the morphemes and/or word history as directed on the Heart Words Teacher Notes.
Your Turn: Children practise writing the word.
Children write the words on their mini whiteboards. Then children 'chin it'. Provide feedback on their responses.
. 
Example script for decoding the Stage +4 Heart Word - "you"
This word is you. "I am looking at you". You.
The children would then repeat the word chorally. “You.”
There are two sounds in you, /y/ and /oo/.
Use your fingers to count the sounds while demonstrating.
We already know that the letter y represents the sound /y/.
Point to the letter y.
Let’s say it together: /y/. The difficult part is this bit.
Point to ou.
The letters o and u represent the sound /oo/ in this word.
Let's say it together: /oo/.
The word is /y/oo/, you. What's the word? Can you tell your partner?
Let’s practise writing you.
Continue with steps outlined in the procedure above.
PRACTISE
The Little Learners Love Literacy® resources provide lots of opportunities for the children to practise decoding and encoding Heart Words in order to reach mastery.-1.png?width=289&height=289&name=Untitled%20design%20(4)-1.png)
Practise the Heart Words regularly with:
- Daily revision & spaced practice with flashcards
- Spelling with mini whiteboards
- Heart Words activity sheets
(reading and writing) - Read, Write and Draw phrases and sentences
- Play decodable quizzes and bingo games
APPLY
The students will then apply their knowledge of Heart Words to reading decodable books and writing independently.
.png?width=582&height=328&name=Decodable%20Books%20(1).png)
With these books, children are always practising what they have been taught (grapheme-phoneme knowledge, decoding skills and Heart Word knowledge). Children will experience success and build confidence while developing the habits of strong readers.
Our decodable books include resources to support you and parents reading at home. Small group reading notes and the how to enjoy this book page at the back of each book reference the Heart Words you should be focussing on and any ‘pre-teaching’ required in your reading warm up.
You will also notice the small group reading notes include discussion points around new Heart Words in the stage.
-1.png?width=840&height=350&name=Untitled%20design%20(5)-1.png)
ASSESS
In addition to your regular checks for understanding and student work samples, Subtest 3 within the Little Learners Assessment of Reading Skills (LLARS) provides an opportunity to formally assess student knowledge of the Heart Words.
To administer the assessment, place the Reading Heart Words assessment material in front of the student and say:These words are Heart Words. Put your finger under each word and tell me what is says.
. 
The student scores 1 point for reading a Heart Word automatically and correctly. No points are scored for incorrect responses, but note the student’s skills. Add the correct responses and record them on the Subtest 3 data table on the teacher form. You can also input the data into our digital LLARS Class Record spreadsheet. Mastery is 100% correct within a stage.
Heart Words are also assessed within the context of Subtest 4 - unseen decodable stories.
In summary, to teach Heart Words following the Little Learners Love Literacy® explicit teaching routine:
- Revise… regularly revise previously taught Heart Words in your daily review.
- Teach... explicitly teach Heart Words by breaking them into sounds and mapping phonemes to graphemes.
- Practise... provide lots of opportunities for children to practise decoding and encoding Heart Words in order to reach mastery.
- Apply... students apply their knowledge of Heart Words to reading decodable books and writing independently.
- Assess... In addition to your regular checks for understanding, administer the LLARS to formally assess Heart Words twice per year.