The easy, FREE way to learn Sight Words: Welcome to The Spelling Routine using Mapped Words®! Find out why word mapping matters on the official Phonics Reform England (PRE) website.
A Faster, FREE Way to Learn the Sight Words taught in Synthetic Phonics Programmes.
​On this site, Speedie Sight Words with The Spelling Routine, we are helping children recognise words by sight quickly, because they have already mapped and stored them securely. We do not use the term 'sight words' to mean words that are taught as whole words to be memorised. Instead, a sight word is one a child can recognise instantly and spell correctly, as a result of accurate word mapping during the self-teaching phase.
Please do not teach Grapheme-to-Phoneme Correspondences (GPCs) and Common Exception Words, Tricky Words, Red Words, or High Frequency Words (whatever you want to call them) together as if they can be aligned.
Teach them separately. These words matter throughout the day. Sight words appear so regularly and make up a large proportion of all text.
According to many sources, there are only around 100 words that make up more than fifty percent of the text that early readers encounter (Fry, 2004; Nation, 2009). These include words such as ‘the’, ‘a’, ‘I’, ‘was’, ‘said’, and so on.
The spelling of these words is not always straightforward in relation to how they sound, particularly when compared to the correspondences taught in phonics. For example, the <a> in ant, as taught in phonics, does not have the same value as the <a> in any. Children need to see which letters are graphemes and understand their sound value. This reflects the importance of forming accurate connections between phonemes and graphemes in order to store words in memory (Ehri, 2014; Treiman, 1993; Moats, 2005).
The Spelling Routine supports this when the word is discussed and used in a sentence. We also ask children to draw something that reminds them of the meaning, strengthening the link between form and meaning, which is critical for word learning (Ehri, 2005; Perfetti, 1992).
Upon entering kindergarten, students are often introduced to a sight word list and taught to memorise and quickly recognise these words. This is typically because teachers do not have these words mapped, and so memorisation becomes the default approach. However, research shows that long-term word learning depends on opportunities to map phonology to orthography through successful decoding and encoding attempts, rather than memorisation alone (Share, 1995; Share, 2004; Caravolas et al., 2001).
We are offering an alternative that aligns with research on orthographic mapping and the self-teaching process, enabling children to build their own word knowledge over time (Ehri, 2014; Share, 1995).
Reference list (APA 7th)
Caravolas, M., Hulme, C., & Snowling, M. J. (2001). The foundations of spelling ability: Evidence from a 3-year longitudinal study. Journal of Memory and Language, 45(4), 751–774.
Ehri, L. C. (2005). Learning to read words: Theory, findings, and issues. Scientific Studies of Reading, 9(2), 167–188.
Ehri, L. C. (2014). Orthographic mapping in the acquisition of sight word reading, spelling memory, and vocabulary learning. Scientific Studies of Reading, 18(1), 5–21.
Fry, E. (2004). Fry’s 300 instant sight words. Teacher Created Resources.
Moats, L. C. (2005). How spelling supports reading: And why it is more regular and predictable than you may think. American Educator, 29(4), 12–43.
Nation, K. (2009). Form-meaning links in the development of visual word recognition. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 364(1536), 3665–3674.
Perfetti, C. A. (1992). The representation problem in reading acquisition. In P. B. Gough, L. C. Ehri, & R. Treiman (Eds.), Reading acquisition (pp. 145–174). Erlbaum.
Share, D. L. (1995). Phonological recoding and self-teaching: Sine qua non of reading acquisition. Cognition, 55(2), 151–218.
Share, D. L. (2004). Orthographic learning at a glance: On the time course and developmental onset of self-teaching. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 87(4), 267–298.
Treiman, R. (1993). Beginning to spell: A study of first-grade children. Oxford University Press.
Speedie Spelling Bee: The Speedie Sight Word Project
Help us support the 1 in 5, and the parents and teachers trying to support them, who know something is off about how high-frequency words are taught.
It will be a FreeBee! Learning with the Speedie Spelling Bee.
Please send me the list of high-frequency words, tricky words, or common exception words, traditionally known as sight words, taught in any phonics programmes you use, as Phonics Reform England (PRE) (PhonicsReformEngland.com) are mapping them and creating FREE videos for parents so their child can learn the first 100 quickly and easily. They see which letters are graphemes and hear the segmented sounds. Aligned with the school programme, but secured early.
We will also provide FREE downloadable cards to print, with the regular text on one side and the mapped version on the other. The mapped version shows which letters are graphemes. (If using Phonemies we can send that version too, which shows the sound value)
Use the mapped side to store the words in the brain’s word bank using the 60-second spelling routine, as this means they will always spell them correctly when writing. The videos show the sound value.
TheSpellingRoutine.com is dedicated to learning spelling words with the routine.
PRE are creating free supplementary resources for every DfE validated phonics programme so that parents and TAs around the world can fill the gaps at the point where we can prevent the dyslexia paradox, that is ages 5 to 7.
In Speech Sound Pics (SSP) classrooms, children can read and spell over 400 high frequency words before the end of Prep / Reception, as they move through the 7 Duck Levels from Term 1 at their own pace, with materials sent home. It is not synthetic phonics. These words are stored early, not aligned to code levels.
This is not just about learning at least the first 100 commonly used words before Year 1. These words make up a large proportion of age-appropriate texts used outside of phonics lessons, and children need to be able to use them when writing beyond phonics sessions.
The brain then begins to self-teach more easily with words that contain correspondences not taught in phonics, as it can understand set for variability more effectively.
Our SSP children are also now using the Village With Three Corners series from the end of SSP Purple, so they see these words in levelled readers. These books are used to ensure that every child reads for pleasure before the middle of Year 1, helping to prevent the dyslexia paradox. Again, it is not synthetic phonics, as we blend phonics readers with mapped levelled readers. Children get what they need, when they need it, at their own pace.
We are aware that synthetic phonics programmes teach high-frequency words in alignment with their phonics progression. Teachers have no choice. However, relying on children to wait until they have been taught enough of the code before securing a core bank of orthographically mapped high-frequency words is concerning. It delays access to the very words that make up a large proportion of the texts they encounter and need to write. Parents can choose to ignore programme guidance and give their child this crucial knowledge, in a way that supports phonics learning.
Without rapid, reliable access to these words, children are more likely to guess, avoid writing, or produce inaccurate spellings, which can undermine confidence and limit engagement. This is particularly problematic for those already at risk, as it creates a gap between what they can decode within a controlled lesson and what they need to handle in real reading and writing. It also reflects a lack of awareness of how reading and spelling skills are most efficiently acquired, and why 1 in 5 children struggle.
If these words are not secured early, in Reception, the opportunity to support accurate word storage and reduce cognitive load is missed, making it harder for the brain to establish efficient pathways for reading and spelling. This will continue to block easy learning for too many children. One in five will really struggle. We need parents to have tools to prevent this. Teachers can slip it in and not explain until later, whrn their children are further along than those in other Reception and year 1 classrooms!
The purpose of Phonics Reform England (PRE) is to enable parents (and some teachers!) to bypass these barriers while we wait for programme developers to separate core code instruction from the learning of commonly used words, along other things (see the 6 Reforms)
PRE is analysing all 45 synthetic phonics programmes and will tell parents what to do at home if they have a child in that one in five. Knowing their High Frequency / Tricky Word / Common |Exception Word lists and being able to master them at home is important, and will be shared here on the Speedie Sight Word site! We will, of course, start with Read Write Inc and Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised. These two schemes are used by more than half of schools in Eengland!
We will also let every parent of a child due to start Reception in September know how to find out if that is their child.
Big things happening at the moment for the sole aim of better supporting ALL of our little humans!
Emma Hartnell-Baker MEd SEN
The Upstream Team
DfE-validated SSP programmes in England teach a broadly similar core set of around 100 or more grapheme–phoneme correspondences. These are organised into groups or phases and taught in a fixed progression.
Common exception words, high-frequency words, red words and tricky words are different labels used to describe a group of words that children encounter very often in reading and writing, but which do not always match the sound–letter correspondences they have been taught at that point, or will ever be taught. High-frequency words refers to how often the words appear in texts, while common exception or tricky words describe words with grapheme–phoneme mappings that are not taught within phonics phases.
Alongside the teaching of the core code, these words are introduced in staged sets that align with each phase. In practice, this means that during each phase, children are taught a small group of these words alongside the corresponding phoneme–grapheme content.
Phonics Reform England is calling for this to change. High-frequency words should not be tied to phonics phases. They should be taught and secured separately, whether they are fully decodable later in the programme or contain correspondences that are not taught within it.
Are We Expecting Too Much in Term 1 of Reception?
Conversation starters from The Upstream Team at Phonics Reform England
Children are taught a core set with no pre-phonics phase, to establish the concept of listening for sounds without the cognitive load of seeing letters.
We use the 10 day Speech Sound Play Plan for this. The first graphemes are introduced by day 5 because by then children have been segmenting words like ant, sat, pin, tin. When we introduce graphemes as “pictures of sounds”, it makes sense. They are a way to represent those sounds on paper.
For many children this is easy, as they start school with good phonemic awareness. For others, it is extremely difficult.
Around 1 in 5 start school unable to hear the sounds in words or blend them. Even if they remember the sounds the letters represent, they are stuck trying to work out the word if they cannot blend. They also cannot spell by listening for the sounds and placing the graphemes in order to build the word.
This is why this group, for us, is the most important.
We teach this self-paced. Some children may spend five weeks on satpin, while others are ready for the next group within days. At the same time, they are forming those letters.
We would not introduce high-frequency words until children are ready to build sentences. For some, this can be within the first three weeks, as the first two are Speech Sound Play. They may then read sentences such as The ant sat, with one high-frequency word.
We make it explicit that these are separate. We tell the children that this is the Green Code Level, satpin, and here is Duck Level 1, these are words we use a lot. Children work through both at their own pace. Some may be on SSP Yellow Code Level and Duck Level 4, others may be on Duck Level 6.
We are not launching the Speech Sound Pics (SSP) approach in England. We are sharing this to show that we are not offering advice as academics or people who have not taught in classrooms. We have supported thousands of children. We are offering a different perspective, and we are not selling a programme.
The issue with the sequence shown is that children are taught s = /s/, a = /æ/ and i = /ɪ/, while at the same time being introduced to words such as is, as and an. The word I is also introduced, which is a capital letter, not just another sound.
For most children, this is cognitive overload. Children who have not consolidated this are expected to move on to more graphemes and more words.
They need to be secure with satpin words first, and the way this is introduced is vital.
We are not sure what support is in place to ensure that every child understands this.
The high-frequency word a represents the schwa. We tend not to use that term at first, especially as children will overpronounce it and change it to /ÊŒ/ as in up. That is why our teachers show that Phonemie first. We tested this with thousands of children and they consistently chose the “blue cow” /ÊŒ/, but very soon learn to hear the difference and use the schwa correctly.
If high-frequency words are separated out, it is easier for children to understand that this is different.
For parents, we start the first video by introducing high-frequency words in the way we know children understand, and we hope this is helpful.
The first half term in Reception is, in our view, the most important. We would be happy if all that was covered in the first 5 weeks was satpin, around 10 high-frequency words, correct formation of all 26 letters, and numbers 1 to 10. This is the Speech Sound Play Plan extended After that, children are able to work through the Core Code Levels at their pace, along with high frequency words.
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Most of learning to read happens through implicit learning during the self-teaching phase. That’s why we can read many as well as man, put as well as cut, Christmas as well as chips, sugar as well as sum, and texts like The Chaos poem, even though no child could ever be explicitly taught all those correspondences.
The purpose of explicit instruction is to get children to that self-teaching phase.
Right now, it’s failing to do that for at least 1 in 5 children in England, where no more than 75% have met minimum standards since explicit phonics was mandated and three-cueing approaches were discarded. This was introduced following concerns, including those raised by Jim Rose, that around 16% of children were not reaching the expected standard.
That’s what we focus on at Phonics Reform England. Making phonics work for every child as the bridge to self-teaching and, ultimately, orthographic mapping.
Common Exception Words (CEW) with the Cue Code. The CEW Code. Code-mapped sight words with Emma Hartnell-Baker. Use them within The Village With Three Corners on Speedie Readies today.