Using Technology to Teach Emergent Readers High Frequency Words

Key points:

If you were to survey an audience of educators (classroom teachers, literacy specialists, reading researchers, and college professors) about whether high-frequency words should be taught in the early years of elementary school, the resounding answer would be YES. After all, these words are important to students’ ultimate reading success.

The nuances of teaching high-frequency words in the early elementary years would only emerge around as These words must be taught.

Fortunately, there is a wealth of research on best practices and engaging technology-based activities for teaching high-frequency words to help teachers make it a fun and engaging learning experience for young students.

Understand high frequency words

Before teaching about sight words, it is important to understand how they are different from sight words. While these word categories are often used interchangeably and can be cross-pollinated, high-frequency words are words that appear more frequently in spoken and written language. Sight words, on the other hand, are those words that students recognize visually, without needing to stop and decode the word, when reading.

For example, “the” is a high frequency word and also a recognizable word for many people. “Email” is not a high frequency word, but it is often a sight word. Classmates’ names often become sight words for students. Kindergarten students who are still emerging readers during the first semester will quickly learn their name by sight, as well as the names of their classmates (…and often gain a great sense of satisfaction from recognizing and read each other’s names!)

When it comes to choosing actual words that are considered high-frequency words, the educational community has adopted three different word lists: the Dolch, Zeno, and Fry high-frequency word lists. These lists have many shared words and there is no research that says one list replaces the other. Any of the lists or teaching a combination of them should help produce successful readers.

Strategies for teaching high frequency words to emerging readers

There are hundreds of ways to teach sight words, and most of those ways fall into two categories of instruction: memorization and phonetic integration.

Both instructional strategies lead students to quickly learn and remember many, many words, both high-frequency words and sight words, with automaticity. This is called orthographic mapping, which is essentially a progression of words permanently stored in a student’s memory for immediate retrieval.

With memorization, teachers can create fun and effective learning opportunities for students, as long as some rules apply. First, it is important to eliminate distractions so that attention is focused on the high-frequency word. Distractions can include other words printed around the target word and accompanying pictures with a word. For example, a picture of a girl on a swing holding her cat can be distracting when the target word is “with.”

It is also important for teachers to clearly say the high frequency word several times and put it in a sentence for contextual understanding. It is also important to give students the opportunity to write the word, so they make the physical connection to the spoken word.

There are several digital flashcard apps that teachers can use to help students memorize high-frequency words. Flashcards can also be shown to the entire class using projectors or interactive displays as part of a whole group activity.

Creating “sound walls” in the classroom, either on a bulletin board or digital screen, highlighting four to five high-frequency words is another great way to help students visualize, practice, and memorize target words. Each week, the words can be changed with new ones for them to learn.

Another strategy for teaching high frequency words is to integrate the words into phonics lessons. It will be helpful for teachers to choose high frequency words that integrate with the phonics skills they are covering. For example, when teaching the phonic element /s/, it may be valuable to include the high-frequency word “said,” even if the vowel irregularity of /ai/ has not yet been taught. If students are learning /s/ and maybe even /d/, they will be excited and motivated to apply this knowledge to learning and remembering a new word.

Whether using memorization or phonetic integration, teachers can play a trivia game with students in which teams compete to find answers to questions about high-frequency words. Or they can have students participate in racetrack-style board games where two or more players move markers along the spaces of a path from start to finish. At each stop, the player must read a word and use it correctly in a sentence to stay in that space. technology, whether through the use of apps or student devices, can be easily incorporated into both game-based activities to make the experiences even more engaging.

Regardless of what instructional strategy is used to teach high frequency words, it is important that students are immersed and active participants in the learning experience. This means that students must listen to, say, read, and write high-frequency words consistently within core lessons. These immersive opportunities are what make the words stick and keep students interested. And it is the ultimate mastery of high-frequency words that will enable young students to become proficient readers.