Readers of last week’s blog have been on a cliff hanger—waiting in eager anticipation to find out how to teach irregular words through orthographic mapping. The wait it over! If you need a refresher on orthographic mapping, read all about it here. And for those of you who don’t suffer from FOMO, but still want the highlights:

• A sight word is any word that is recognized instantly and effortlessly by sight, whether it is spelled regularly or irregularly
• Sight word vocabulary is not based on visual memory or visual skills, as we thought for many years. Many scientific studies have proven this. Ditch the flash cards! No more rote memorization of high frequency words. Let the kids happy dance and learn through orthographic mapping!
• Input and storage are not the same thing. The input of reading is visual. Storage is orthographic, based on the sound structure, the spelling, and the meaning of the word.
• Becoming a fluent reader requires building a vast repertoire of sight words. This requires:
  • Knowledge of phonemic segmentation (being able to separate and manipulate the sounds within words)
  • Letter-sound correspondence
  • Knowledge of the correct pronunciation of words stored in memory
• We map words by analyzing their pronunciations (accessing the sounds within the word) and then connecting these sounds with printed letter sequences. The pronunciations of words act as mental “anchors” for the letter sequences. The spellings of words get “glued” onto the sound structure of the word and stored in long-term memory as sight words!

All children must achieve reading fluency so they can comprehend what they are reading. Pop quiz: what can you teach that will lead to better sight word recognition and fluency? Readers of my blog know the answer—phonemic awareness! And you must teach this skill up to the advanced level— to phonemic manipulation, deletion, and substitution. Here’s a recap of an advanced phonemic awareness skill. If you have a beginning or a struggling reader, this task will likely be frustrating. You can find out your student’s phonemic awareness level by using this free screener. This example below is all auditory; no letters involved. You are just working on sounds. You can always introduce letters if students are familiar with these vowel teams/letter-sound correspondences.

• Ask the student to say the word “crown”
• Now say it again, but change the /k/ sound to a /b/. What word do you get? ( brown)
• Now ask the student to say “brown” again. Now ask what word you get if you change the /ow/ sound  in brown to the long /a/ sound (brain).
• Now change the /n/ in “brain” to /l/. Tell me what word you have. (braille)

Now that we are all caught up on the importance of orthographic mapping and phonemic awareness, onward to irregular words! The good news is that the process of teaching irregular words through orthographic mapping isn’t that different from teaching regular words.

1. Even the “rule breaker” words follow some of the rules. Always focus students’ attention on the regular part of the word that they CAN use their phonics skills for
2. Make connections between the sounds in the words and the letter or letters that represent that sound
3. Teach students the part of the word that doesn’t follow the expected letter-sound correspondence. This is the part they need to learn “by heart.” These irregular words can be called “heart words”

Watch this quick video for a demo of what this looks like in practice:

Here are two great resources on heart words:

Heart Word Magic

Collection of Heart Words, Lesson Plans, Lots of Great Info

Learning to HEART Irregular Words and DITCH the Flashcards