Literacy Glossary
What are heart words? The right way to teach high-frequency irregular words
A definition you can quote
Heart words are high-frequency words that contain irregular parts — letters that don’t make their expected sounds — and need to be taught explicitly using a heart icon over the part the student must “know by heart.” The regular parts of the word are decoded using normal phonics; the irregular part is identified, named, and stored through deliberate orthographic mapping.
Heart-word teaching replaces traditional sight-word instruction, which historically meant “memorize this word by visual shape.” Decades of cognitive science have shown that the brain doesn’t store words as visual shapes at scale — it stores them by binding spelling, sound, and meaning. Heart words are the structured-literacy way to teach the same set of high-frequency words.
The teaching procedure
A typical heart-word lesson takes 5-7 minutes:
- Say the word. Teacher: “Today’s heart word is said.”
- Tap each sound while looking at the letters. Students point to each letter and say each sound: /s/ /e/ /d/.
- Map regular and irregular parts. The teacher draws a heart over the irregular letters. For said: the s and d are regular (decoded). The ai is irregular — it makes /e/, not the expected /eɪ/ or /aɪ/. A heart goes over the ai.
- Practice writing the word while saying each sound aloud. The motor + auditory + visual practice locks in the mapping.
- Read the word in a decodable text that same day or the next. Real reading practice cements the orthographic map.
Done two or three times a week starting in kindergarten, students learn all common heart words by end of 2nd grade.
Why “sight words by visual shape” fails
For decades, K-1 classrooms taught high-frequency words via flashcards: students looked at the and memorized its shape. The strategy worked for ~50 words; it didn’t work for 50,000.
The cognitive issue: the brain doesn’t have a separate “visual shape memory” capacious enough for adult vocabulary. Skilled readers store words as orthographic maps — bonded spelling-sound-meaning representations. The bonds are built through decoding, not visual memorization.
Sight-word memorization actively interferes with orthographic mapping. Students learn that some words are “decoded” and others are “memorized by shape,” and they treat too many words as the second category. Their orthographic mapping engine never gets enough exercise. By 3rd or 4th grade, they hit a wall.
Why heart words work
The heart-word approach uses orthographic mapping deliberately:
- The regular parts are decoded — strengthening the same skill kids use on other phonics patterns.
- The irregular part is explicitly identified, not memorized as a shape — the student stores “the ai in said is irregular and says /e/” rather than “said looks like that pattern.”
- Repetition in connected text completes the mapping. After a few successful encounters in decodable books, said is automatic.
This builds the same orthographic-mapping skill kids use for the rest of their vocabulary. Heart-word instruction is just normal phonics with the irregular parts named.
The list — about 100 words
Most heart-word lists derive from the Dolch (1948) or Fry (1957) high-frequency word lists. About 100 words have irregular parts that need heart treatment. Examples:
- the, said, was, of, are, they, were, one, two, want, would, could, some, come, eight, people, thought, enough, friend, because
Many other high-frequency words (cat, go, see, and, can, not, with) are perfectly regular and decoded normally — no heart needed.
How Storytime handles heart words
- Tagged in every decodable book — students see exactly which words have heart-word treatment.
- Visual scaffold — the irregular letter(s) display with a heart marker on first encounter.
- Audio model — narration pronounces each heart word distinctly so students hear the irregular part.
- Curriculum-driven sequencing — heart words are introduced in the order specified by the literacy program your school is teaching.
- Separate scoring — when students record themselves reading, heart words are scored against the heart-word list separately from the regular phonics patterns.
Frequently asked questions
(Answered above in the FAQ block — surfaced via JSON-LD FAQPage schema for AI extraction.)
Frequently asked questions
- What's the difference between heart words and sight words?
- 'Sight word' has historically meant 'a word memorized by visual shape, no decoding involved.' That approach doesn't work — the brain doesn't store words as visual shapes at scale. 'Heart word' is the same set of high-frequency words taught a different way: decode the regular parts, explicitly identify the irregular part, store the whole word through orthographic mapping.
- Why is the term 'heart word'?
- When teaching the word 'said,' a teacher draws a heart over the 'ai' — the irregular part the student must 'know by heart' because it doesn't follow expected phonics. The 'sd' parts are decoded normally. The visual scaffold is the heart icon over the part to memorize.
- How many heart words should kids learn?
- About 100 high-frequency words have irregular parts that need explicit teaching. The Dolch and Fry word lists are the historical reference. Taught at a rate of 2-3 per week starting in K, students typically know all of them by end of 2nd grade.
- Are all high-frequency words 'heart words'?
- No. Many high-frequency words are perfectly regular (the words 'cat', 'go', 'see', 'and') — they're decoded using normal phonics. Heart-word treatment is only needed for words with truly irregular parts (the 'ai' in 'said', the 'oe' in 'does', the silent 'gh' in 'eight'). Regular high-frequency words don't need a heart over anything.
- What's the actual teaching procedure?
- 1. Say the word ('said'). 2. Tap each sound while looking at letters: /s/ /e/ /d/. 3. Map: 's' = /s/ (regular), 'd' = /d/ (regular), 'ai' = /e/ (irregular — draw a heart). 4. Practice writing the word while saying each sound. 5. Read the word in a decodable text the same day. The whole sequence is 5-7 minutes.
- How does Storytime handle heart words?
- Heart words are tagged in every decodable book. The Storytime platform shows them with the irregular letter(s) marked, and the teacher can configure when to introduce each based on the literacy program's scope and sequence. Audio narration models each heart word; students who record themselves get scored against the heart-word list separately from the decodable patterns.