Last updated: January 11, 2026
When I was first introduced to the Heart Word Strategy for teaching irregular words, something in my teacher brain just clicked! I implemented it the VERY NEXT DAY (with little to no prep whatsoever, which is an added bonus) and never, ever looked back! In this blog post, I will share with you the no-frills, no-prep easy way that you can start using this strategy on your very next lesson AND provide a FREE Heart Words Instructional Routine to serve as your start-up guide to Heart Words.
Sight Words: A Common Misconception
Let me also very quickly clear up a common misconception when it comes to the use of the term “Sight Words”. The term sight word encompasses ANY word that a reader can recognize quickly and automatically, or on sight. This includes both words that are phonetically regular (cat, him, but) AND words that have irregularities (said, the, of). This has been a BIG shift in language for me and I will admit, I am still working on referring to the words I use for heart word instruction as High Frequency Words rather than Sight Words. Ok – now that we’ve cleared that up, back to HEART WORDS!
What is the Heart Word Strategy?
For those of you who may not have heard of it, it’s a strategy that encourages students to make connections to the parts of words – both regular and irregular – rather than encouraging students to memorize the entire word. I can think back (and kind of cringe) at repeatedly telling my students that irregular words/wacky words/trick words whatever it may be that you call them with your students – just HAD to be memorized. This is simply NOT the case and now that I know better, I do better.
I used to encourage my students to use the say it, spell it, say it routine to memorize this (and many other) words and it simply wasn’t effective or sufficient for all students. That’s where the heart word strategy comes into play.
Easy, No-Frills Step by Step Routine to Use with Students
Take for example the word said. If I were to introduce this word to students knowing what I know now, it would go something like this.
- Introduce the word orally, have students repeat it back and use it in a sentence. We might brainstorm some words that rhyme with said. Basically, the goal is to try and use it in conversation a few times so everyone is saying and hearing the target word.
- Next – we focus on the SOUNDS, or phonemes, in the word. We might tap out the word or embed some movement and “jump the sounds”. Essentially, we want students to count how many sounds are in the target word.
Example: “Let’s break apart the sounds in the word said.” /s/ /e/ /d/ – how many sounds do you hear in the word said?” I may put magnetic counters up on the board to represent each sound, especially at the beginning of the year for students to have a physical representation. I may even just keep it really simple and draw 3 basic lines – one for each sound in the word said.
My whiteboard would probably look something like this:
3. Next – we analyze the word sound, by sound and determine if the word part is spelled in the regular, expected, predictable way OR if it’s an unexpected, irregular “heart part”. Heart parts of words are the parts that students WILL need to memorize in a word. Notice – this is SO much different than asking them to memorize the whole word as one unit which is simply not best practice and supported by the Science of Reading.
Example: What is the first sound we heard in said? → /s/ → how do we spell or represent that /s/ sound? → When we hear the /s/ sound, we spell it with the letter s. I would reiterate to students that the /s/ sound in the word said is spelled the regular or expected way and that it is NOT a heart part we need to worry about memorizing. I would then put an s on the first line that I drew on the whiteboard. I might then jump around and move on to the /d/ sound and have the same conversation before honing in on the “heart part” of the word said, but you can also move through the sounds in order if that makes more sense for you and your students. I sometimes save the heart parts for last to build the anticipation and try to make it fun for students when we learn the irregular/wacky/heart parts.
Click here to grab your FREE copy of my Heart Word Instructional Routine for a quick guide while you work to find your own groove in teaching Heart Words.
Using this strategy when teaching online
This strategy is easily implemented for online teaching as well. You can create a basic slide deck with the heart words your students have learned so far to use for your daily review. For new words, the whiteboard feature and annotation tools on Zoom offer a quick, no-prep teaching option using the protocols outlined above.
Additional Resources to Support Student Learning of Heart Words
After working on this routine with my students in my first grade classroom for a while, I did find myself longing for a template to keep student work organized and to have all of our newly introduced heart words neatly in one place. I created this simple heart word template that could then be tucked into student work folders as a reference for our weekly learning of new words. Students can simply color in the heart for any irregular parts and then get practice writing the whole word on the line without the sound boxes. If you want to get a little fancy and switch it up, you can even provide students with little heart stickers to put in the heart spots once in a while. I found perfect sized heart stickers at Michael’s and like to offer this as an option every so often on special occasions…my students love it!
You can grab my Heart Word Mapping Template here!
If you made it this far – thank you so much for checking out this long-winded post! I hope you have found this information helpful. I promise if you give Heart Word instruction a chance, you will NOT regret it!
Thanks for reading!
Xo Emily
