Stop Memorizing “Sight Words,” Start Decoding Them

Stop Memorizing “Sight Words,” Start Decoding Them

You’ve been in the classroom, you know the drill: word lists, flashcards, and flashing words over and over until kids (hopefully) remember them. For some students, it can take hundreds of repetitions to finally learn a single word this way.

But here’s the problem- our brains don’t actually store words as whole images. They store them by connecting sounds to letters and letter patterns. This process, known as orthographic mapping, is how words become anchored in long-term memory for automatic recognition, which means most high-frequency words don’t need to be memorized at all, they can be decoded.

What is a sight word vs. high-frequency word?

Here’s an important distinction:

• A sight word is any word you can read automatically, without sounding out or guessing. (Adults typically know between 30,000- 70,000 sight words, and almost every word in this blog article is a sight word for you.)
• A high-frequency word is simply a word that shows up often in text. Some follow regular phonics patterns, while others have irregular spellings. In fact, only about 4% of words in English contain more than one irregular sound-spelling pattern.

We can think of high-frequency words on a continuum:

Regular words (it, can)	Follow the sound-spelling patterns kids already know.
Temporarily irregular words (is, down)	Only look tricky because the phonics pattern hasn’t been taught yet in the scope and sequence.
Permanently irregular words (of, one)	Contain rare spellings we truly can’t decode.

 

Many schools also use the term “heart words” for words with a “tricky” part, whether temporarily irregular or permanently irregular. The problem is that this often encourages kids to memorize those “tricky” parts, even when they could actually be decoded once the right phonics pattern is learned.

In traditional programs, students are forced to wait months or even years to finally learn those “tricky” patterns, and in the meantime, teachers rely on memorization strategies that eat up valuable time.

✨ Secret Stories® changes everything.

Instead of memorizing (or waiting), students get immediate access to the phonics patterns hiding inside high-frequency words. Suddenly, those “temporarily irregular” words stop being irregular the second kids know the Secret.

• The /y/ in “my” makes sense with the SneakyY Secret.
• The /ow/ in “how” is no mystery once they know the ow/ou Secret.

By unlocking these patterns right away, Secret Stories® transforms high-frequency words from something to memorize into something to decode. And when decoding takes the lead, kids can read and write more words, faster.

Secret Stories® transforms high-frequency words from something to memorize into something to decode.

So the next time you grab a stack of flashcards, ask yourself: Do my students really need to memorize this word… or could they decode it if they just knew the Secret?