A subscriber asked if I could create a video that shows what I’m doing at the end of the day to practice the heart words I’ve introduced. You see it most days in my lesson plans. At this point—October—it’s nothing fancy or analytical, but it is an important step. Before we start taking a closer look at some of these irregular high frequency words and figuring out what is the “hard part to remember by heart” (and putting a little red heart under that letter or letters), the students need to learn:
what a “word” is
that words (and names) have first letters and last letters and letters in between and that they’re always in the same order
what “say” the word means and what “spell” the word means and that they can spell words by always saying the same letters in the same order
that in our class we have a little pile of words that we seem to talk about a lot (and that are on display)
that we sometimes see these words around the classroom or in books or use them in our writing
that we call these “heart words” (right now we say we call them heart words because we love them but that will soon change), and
that during writing time we call these words “words we know.”
Soon, we will start analyzing the sounds in these words and the letters used to spell them. And we’ll put a little red heart under the irregular portion of the word which we call “the hard part to remember by heart.”
When? When do you start analyzing the words? Lots of you ask when.
It all depends. There are no hard and fast rules. There’s also no rush. Trust me on this; if students don’t even know all of their letter sounds, how will they know if letters aren’t making the correct sound?
I’m planning to introduce the concept of “the hard part to remember by heart” during the third round of The Name Game. During the second round, the students are suggesting letters to use for each sound we hear. I’m briefly talking about the different letters that are used for some sounds in some of our student names (for example, a y is used for the short i sound in Brooklynn).
During the third round—the third time we work our way through the first names in our class—I’ll start putting a heart under the “hard part to remember by heart” in our students’ names. This is the best way to introduce the idea of the heart meaning it’s a tricky spot, that a different letter or letters is being used to represent a sound we know, or that some letters are doubled or silent. Why? Because students love analyzing their names and the names of their classmates.
Once they understand what the heart is for, it’ll be time to take a closer look at our heart words and start writing them with a little red heart under the “hard parts to remember by heart.”
This should start in November and continue for the rest of the school year.
In December, I’ll probably start using the heart word slide show and its sequence of questions.
For now though, just be sure you’re introducing some heart words. They don’t need to be the same words I’m doing—the ones you see in my lesson plans—although they are definitely good ones. And it’s okay if some of them are actually regular words (for example, I have yes in my heart word display because we used it for lunch count). Be sure you’re attending to the bullet points above.
And stay tuned. Heart word practice will morph often as the students grow and the school year unfolds.
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