Which High Frequency Words?
One of the things that makes learning to read so difficult is that
even when children have mastered all the critical core phonic
skills they will encounter many words that are not phonically
regular. That’s the bad news. The good news however, is that the
outcome of our research and analyses of all the words within the
500 Books indicates that a small number of words occur over
and over again and are incredibly useful and a large number of
words occur with very low frequency. For example, we have found
that just 16 words account for over 28% of all the words in the
500 books and 100 words account for over 50% of the words in
the 500 books. So teaching a small number of words is
extremely powerful and gives children access to a significant
proportion of any books that they read. An added bonus in
learning around 100 high frequency words is that these words
occur just as often in adult literature so will facilitate children’s
ability to generalise what they have learnt as their reading
progresses. Skill matching links 100 high frequency words to the
books in which they occur most often within the 500 books.
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