

This is t where phonemic awareness occurs. The phonological processor helps us understand that phonemes, or sounds, make up words. The strongest sight word instruction will address each of these processors to help students build connections in their brain. Louisa Moats says that our brain uses phonological, orthographic, meaning, and context processors when recognizing a word. Research shows that when our brain reads a word, there are actually four parts of the brain that are working together. So how do we help those high frequency words become sight words? How does the brain learn to read? Most of the word can usually still be decoded, but there will be one or more parts that students need to know by heart. Heart words are high frequency words that have at least one part that is irregular and, therefore, not decodable to students. High frequency words can be both decodable or not decodable to our students. These are words that our students need to learn because they will show up in the books that they are reading. High frequency words are the most commonly occurring words in text. Our goal when teaching high frequency words is that they will eventually become sight words.

The average adult has 30,000 to 60,000 sight words in their memory bank. Sight words are any words that you can instantly recognize by sight. These terms are often used interchangeably by teachers so it can quickly get confusing, but there are distinct differences. Before we dive in, let’s quickly discuss the difference between sight words vs.
