Heart Words

About this tool

Heart Words is the Science-of-Reading routine teachers currently draw on whiteboards every morning: a high-frequency word that will not obey the code sits in sound boxes, and the child taps each box to mark the sounds. The regular parts — the parts the child can already read — settle with a quiet underline, because those parts are the lesson. The one stubborn part gets a small heart stamped into the corner of its tile, with the letters still perfectly readable underneath, and a warm voice says: this part we learn by heart. There is no marking, no score and no wrong tap available; every box is tappable, in any order, so nothing here can go wrong.

Flip the card and the word turns up where it actually lives — inside a short spoken sentence with an illustration, so a word like of or was finally has something to hold onto. Words you have mapped become book spines on a cosy shelf that never counts them, and the review ring quietly revisits the ones you met longest ago. The first shelf of ten words is free forever and is a complete tool. Premium opens the rest of the sequence, the class shelf and printable heart-word cards for the pocket chart.

How to use it in class

• Pick a shelf, then tap each box in the word while the class says the sounds — order does not matter.
• When the heart appears, pause: that is the part to learn by heart, and the voice will say so.
• Flip the card to hear and see the word inside a real sentence with its picture.
• With Premium, open the later shelves, keep a class shelf and print the cards for word work.

Classroom ideas

• Project one heart word at the start of every phonics lesson and let a different child do the mapping.
• Send the printed cards to the pocket chart, then revisit the shelf on Friday to see how it filled up.
• Use the flip side for newcomers and language learners: the picture plus the spoken sentence carries the meaning that a function word cannot.