High Frequency words

High frequency words are common words, i.e. words that appear very often in written texts).

They are a mixture of decodable words (words that can be sounded out), and tricky words (words which have to be learned and recognised by sight because the English spelling code works in an unusual or uncommon way).

It is really important that children learn how to read these words as they make up a large proportion of words found in everyday texts.

In addition, pupils also need to learn how to spell these words, as they will need to use them a great deal in their writing. 

Research has shown that just 16 words, such as ‘and’, ‘he’, ‘I’ and ‘in’, but also the more phonetically-difficult words such as ‘the’, ‘to’, ‘you’, ‘said’, ‘are’, ‘she’ and ‘was’, make up a quarter of the words in a piece of writing, whether for adults or children.

Your child's class teacher will inform you which words your child needs to learn. Please practise these daily at home.

To practise the words, start in the top left hand corner and work your way down to the bottom of that column. Once the column is complete, go to the word in the top box of the next column and work your way down again etc.

Spelling Lists