Spelling Practice Educational Resources

Some of the first words your child learns are high frequency words. High frequency words are exactly what they sound like -- words that come up often in speaking, reading, and writing, and that are easiest to learn simply by repetition. Help your child become familiar with high frequency words with our treasure trove of materials -- worksheets, flash cards, articles, lesson plans, and lots more.

After recently learning the alphabet, opening a book and seeing all of the now recognizable letters grouped together in ways young learners may not understand can be jarring. Many of those words are repeated often, compounding the confusion.
Learning these will drastically increase the understandability of a passage when a new reader approaches it. The most common list of high frequency words is a list of over 300 words commonly occurring in children’s literature, composed by Edward Dolch.
While it is inconceivable to have your students memorize all of the words in the English language, these high frequency words are being taught as sight words, meaning students should be able to read them simply by seeing them. Phonemic awareness can help, but many of the high frequency words are phonetically irregular.
There are many ways to approach learning these high frequency words:

• Flashcards - Write the words on index cards and show them to the children. Start with 10 words. Once the student can quickly and consistently identify the first ten, start another 10, interspersing the first 10 so the student doesn’t forget them.
• Word Search - Having students search for a particular pattern of letters in an otherwise randomly assembled field will help to cement this group of letters as a word when reading.
• Complete the Sentence - Using high frequency words to fill in the blank in a sentence will not only help the students remember and identify the sight word, but also associate its meaning and usage.