I have come to love orthographic mapping heart words, and I think you will too. Nine months ago if you had asked me to use orthographic mapping to sound out heart words, I would have been at a loss. Orthographic mapping heart words is a relatively new term for a lot of us teachers. The idea of taking high frequency words and applying decoding strategies instead of rote memorization is a big shift in our thinking but a must. Recent studies show that it is best practice to have students learn heart words/high frequency words by their spelling pattern.
We all know about sight words/high frequency words, and the importance of mastery. The struggle is real trying to come up with engaging activities that help students rote memorize the long list of sight words. I felt defeated in my instruction of sight words. It didn’t matter how engaging I made the activities, there was always that handful of students who just didn’t seem to get it.
Until nine months ago when I walked into a friend’s classroom and saw her heart word bulletin board. After hearing her short explanation, I did some research into heart words. I immediately decided to try it out. It was towards the end of the school year, and my kiddos had been virtual all year. They were struggling more than usual so I began to apply orthographic mapping to heart words/high frequency words. I was amazed at the results, and I am so excited to share them with you.
What Is a Heart Word?
So what is a heart word exactly? The idea behind heart words is that even though high frequency words do have parts that are irregular and don’t follow a phonics rule, students can still sound out the word using orthographic mapping. By utilizing orthographic mapping, students are able to apply phonics rules and spelling patterns to high frequency words. The students then have only smaller sections they have to memorize by heart making it a heart word.
How to Teach Heart Words Using Orthographic Mapping
Now that we know the process, it’s relatively easy to introduce in your classroom. Just follow this simple four step process or click the picture below to receive the free orthographic mapping heart word worksheets:
- Say the word and tap out how many sounds you hear in the word.
- Draw that many lines for the sounds in the word.
- Write out the sounds that the students are able to decode.
- Then last but not least introduce the part that doesn’t follow the rule and draw a heart above or below it. “This is the part we have to know by heart because it doesn’t follow the rules.” My kinders love to quote this when we are working on our heart words. We also love to do actions where they pretend they are making a heart with their hands over their heart.
Check out this freebie just for you here…. Orthographic Mapping Heart Words.
Orthographic Mapping Flash Words
As you may have been able to figure out by now, we know that some high frequency words are completely decodable. These are just words that are important for our students to recognize quickly to help them on their journey to reading. We like to call these flash words. We want to get to know them in a flash! And some heart words are not permanent depending on whether you have taught the spelling rule or not. Especially for kindergarten, some heart words will not be permanent and can change once the rule has been taught.
I hope you have found this helpful and are ready to try out teaching heart words in your classroom. I love giving out freebies and hope you find this resource helpful. But if you are interested in the complete set, please click on the link below for the pre-primer and kindergarten dolche sight word list in this bundle.
