High Frequency Words: What are they and How to learn them

Learn about high frequency words, such as what they are and how to master them!

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Author
Lucy Hart

Published
August 2024

High Frequency Words: What are they and How to learn them

Learn about high frequency words, such as what they are and how to master them!

icon of a star with a smiley face

Author
Lucy Hart

Published
August 2024

High Frequency Words: What are they and How to learn them

Learn about high frequency words, such as what they are and how to master them!

icon of a star with a smiley face

Author
Lucy Hart

Published
August 2024

Key takeaways

  • High-frequency words (HFW) are the words that appear most commonly in the English language.

  • Recognising and being able to read high-frequency words give children lots of confidence
  • When introducing new high frequency words (HFW) to your child, give them a few new words at a time

As children learn to read and write, they may be asked to practise their high-frequency words. But what exactly are they? And why are they so important?

Below, we break down what high-frequency words are, take a look at a few examples of them, and compiled some tips and tricks to making learning them a breeze!  

What are high-frequency words?

High-frequency words (HFW) are the words that appear most commonly in the English language.

These words may not mean much on their own, but they’re really important in adding meaning and context to sentences. We use them all the time in our reading and writing, often without thinking about it!

A child may be able to sound out some of them, such as ‘at’, ‘in’ or ‘he’, but some are not decodable through phonics, such as ‘said’, ‘are’ or ‘Mr’. 

Research has suggested that there are just sixteen words that will make up a quarter of the words in a text, regardless of whether it’s been written for an adult or a child.

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Examples of high-frequency words

Some examples of high-frequency words include:

  • And
  • The
  • At
  • A
  • Said
  • In

For even more examples, why not download our free 100 high-frequency word list? It’s the perfect way to help your child learn even more high-frequency words!

Why are high-frequency words so important?

  • Recognising and being able to read high-frequency words give children lots of confidence: if they can already recognise a quarter of the words in a piece of text, they’re more likely to want to keep reading.
  • In comparison, if they don’t recognise those words, they’ll have to work much harder at sounding out the words, and are more likely to become discouraged.

Basically, by recognising the high-frequency words, a child already has some very strong building blocks for reading under their belt!

My child has learnt their 100 high-frequency words. What next?

After children have learned the first 100 high-frequency words, they’ll be introduced to the next 200 high-frequency words.

  • By the end of Year 2, most children should know all of these words, as they will then be introduced to the Year 3/4 statutory spelling words.
  • Why not download our free 200 high-frequency word list to help your child learn these words?

How to learn high frequency words

Key Stage 1

Start small and build up

When introducing new high frequency words (HFW) to your child, give them a few new words at a time – maybe 3-5 to start with. You could even mix them in with familiar words.

Use flashcards

It’s really useful to print out HFW onto flashcards, which you can use in lots of creative ways!

  1. Do quickfire practice by showing your child a card and asking them what the word is.
  2. Put the cards face down and ask your child to pick a card and read the word out loud. Challenge them to write a silly sentence which uses that word in context!
  3. Play Snap or Pairs using them, shouting the correct word as they match them.
  4. Lay out the cards face-up. Say one of the high frequency words and ask your child to use a fly swat (or spatula) to slap the word as quickly as they can!

Put them all around your house!

A great way to learning HFW is to make sure your child sees them regularly. You could start by sticking them on the fridge or the door so they are visible.

Fill in the gaps

Write a HFW on a whiteboard. Ask your child to close their eyes; replace one letter with a dash and ask your child to tell you which letter is missing.

Play games

Feeling creative? Why not use HFW to create bingo sheets, dominoes or magnet fishing? You could even play a game of Twister and add the words to the mat.

Key Stage 2

As spelling becomes more important in Key Stage 2, it can be quite handy to have some fun activities up your sleeve to make learning their words engaging and memorable. As with the first 100 high frequency words, you’ll want to introduce these words to your child first before playing games to consolidate their learning.

Spelling in shaving cream!

A great way to practise spellings is to make it very tactile. Squirt some shaving cream on a table and then get your child to write the words in the shaving foam with their finger. For less mess, you could pour some salt or sand into a shallow tray and do the same.

Hopscotch

If the weather is good enough, grab some chalk and get outside. Write the letters of the alphabet in a jumble on the floor (make sure they all face the same way!) and then say a word. Your child has to hop or jump from one letter to the next to spell it out.

Play some games

Scrabble and Bananagrams are not only fun games, they can also be used to practise spellings. Pick out the letter tiles for one of your child’s words and say the word, and then ask your child to spell the word. If your child is quite competitive, add an extra element by timing them and keeping a leaderboard to see how they improve over time! Get arty If your child is quite artistic, you could ask them to turn each word into a work of art. Why not try writing the word in colourful bubble writing, or write the ‘easy’ letters that they can remember in one colour and the more tricky ones that they forget in a different colour?

Use creative writing

  1. Create an acrostic for the spelling words: can your child make it rhyme or make it make sense?
  2. Why not put the spelling words into sentences? If your child is up for a challenge, try writing a story which uses all of their words!
 

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