High Frequency Word Harvest

Adam started school a couple of weeks ago and has received his first set of High Frequency Words. These are words that occur mostly frequently in written text. They are often words that have little meaning on their own but contribute to the sentence. Some high frequency words can be sounded out using phonics. However, many are classed as “tricky words”. These are words that do not make sense when they are sounded out. These words have to be learnt by memory. Apparently learning the first 100 high frequency words gives a beginner reader access to 50% of any text. As a teacher I saw first hand the importance of learning high frequency words and now, as a parent, I am starting to help Adam learn his words.

Whenever Adam receives a new set of High Frequency Words I have set myself a challenge to think of different ways to help him learn the words. For his first set I devised a High Frequency Word Harvest activity.

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First of all I needed to make some carrots. Using Orange Craft Foam and a Black Permanent Marker I made outlines of twenty carrots. I created two sets of the high frequency words: the, a, to, and, said, in, he, I , of, it.

After making carrot markings on each shape, I cut out the carrots. Next I made a small hole at the top of each carrot and threaded through Green Curling Ribbon. After tying a knot in the ribbon I used scissors to curl each piece.

Next I needed some soil. This is where I failed. Originally my plan was to use soil from the garden. I placed some soil in a sensory bin but left it outside over night. Typically it rained hard that night so I was left with soggy mud. I therefore decided to make my own soil using any items I could find in our kitchen cupboards. I located some out of date Couscous and supermarket bought black food colouring. I mixed the two ingredients together with boiling water. I allowed time for the couscous to cool before placing it in our favourite sensory bin. The last task was to hide the high frequency word carrots into the pretend soil.

Adam took to the activity straight away. He is used to digging for items in our sensory bins. He found it strange though when I asked if he could read what was written on the carrots. As a result for our first game I read the word on each carrot. It didn’t take him long before Adam wanted to read the words himself. Each word he read correctly he placed in his basket.

I lost count how many times Adam played the game. Once all the carrots were removed he simply planted them into the soil and started again.

It was obvious during the activity how Adam is used to taking part in sensory play activities with me. He couldn’t resist transferring the couscous soil from one container to another whilst feeling the soil between his fingers. I can tell many of our high frequency word activities will have some type of sensory element to them.

High Frequency Word Activity Extension:

Once Adam was ready to move on we re-used our high frequency word carrots to play another game. This time we placed all the carrot words face down on the table. We took it in turns to turn over two carrots. We had to read both of the carrot words. If the words were the same then we got to keep the carrots. If not, then the carrots were returned and play continued. Adam loves these types of memory games and he was so distracted by winning that he didn’t realise how many words he had read!