If you learned to read a couple of decades ago, you probably remember sight words — lists of common words you were told to memorise as whole shapes, on flashcards stuck to the fridge. Structured literacy takes a different, more effective approach, and 'heart words' are at the centre of it.
The problem with memorising whole words
The old idea was that some words are simply 'irregular' and must be memorised as a picture. But research on how the brain reads shows that skilled readers don't store words as images — they map the sounds to the letters. Even so-called irregular words are mostly regular.
Take the word said. The 's' and the 'd' are perfectly regular. It's only the 'ai' — spelling a short 'e' sound — that's unexpected. So instead of memorising the whole word, a child only needs to learn that one tricky part 'by heart'.
So what is a heart word?
A heart word is a high-frequency word where most of it follows the regular code, and just one part has to be learned by heart. When teaching, you decode the regular graphemes as usual and mark the tricky part — often with a small heart — to show it's the bit to remember.
Decode what you can. Learn by heart only what you must. That's the whole idea.
Why this works better
- It's less to remember — one tricky part instead of a whole word.
- It reinforces phonics rather than working against it.
- It shows children that English is far more logical than it first appears.
- It builds transferable knowledge — the regular parts show up in hundreds of other words.
Our Heart Words pack marks the heart part on every card, so children can see exactly which part to decode and which to hold in memory.
