Foundation Class 

What are Heart Words in the Prep Classroom?

Last semester, we were learning so much about reading and how sounds and letters work.  I cannot wait to share the love of reading with my students and help them unlock all the code!

One of the ways we see students learn to read is by learning “sight words”, which will help the students become faster and more fluent readers. In our classroom, teaching high-frequency words (words that come up often in our reading) is done a little differently.  Instead of memorising sight words, we are using the heart word method! 

What does that mean?  With the heart word method, we focus on what parts of a word we do know, before moving on to the parts of a word that don’t “play by the rules”, and these are the sounds in the words that we have to remember by heart for now.

What words do play fair and follow rules?  The students use their knowledge of letters and sounds to decode.  (Words like at, stop, and cat are all words that “play fair.”) 

When the students are taught the heart word method, they are no longer expected to just memorise whole words.  By paying attention to the parts of the word that do make sense, the students know that English is a language with rules that help us learn to read.

For Example:  said

The word 'said' has 3 sounds.  Two of those sounds play fair, the s and the d!  The only sound that doesn’t is ai making a /eh/ sound.  So, we say the sounds that do play fair, and then put a heart above the part that doesn’t (to let the students know we must learn it by heart!)

Our Heart Wall has begun in our classroom and will continue to grow throughout the year. It will help support the students with their reading and writing. It has been fantastic to see the growth the Prep students have gained already by using the heart words.

The Preps have been having some fun in class by playing literacy games to consolidate their learning of high frequency words. The fun activity of ‘Celebrity Head’ re-invigorated the students’ interest around their sounds. Also working together brings collaboration, a touch of competition and team spirit. 

I have been able to use these types of games as a guide of the Prep’s understandings and any misconceptions can be addressed easily and of course it is fun!