5 Ways To Learn Key and High Frequency Words - Literacy Recources

Whether your child has just started, or gone back to school, or you are home educating/schooling, we have a variety of literacy resources that you might find useful.

Some schools are still sending out word lists to be learnt, either 45 reception keywords, Dfes high frequency words, or some schools simply have their own lists. Don't panic if the school hasn't given you any either, as some schools aren't using this method at all. We thought we would provide some resources and ideas to help those that wanted them.

So here are our 5 ways to help your child learn these words.

1) Play games with the words - like snap, pairs, and ask a question. We have printable sets of flashcards so you can play these games.

2) Finding the words in a book - this helps to not see the words in isolation, but as a part of reading. Read a book together, and the child has one or more keywords to spot and read in the text. 

3) Put words around the house - Now some people won't want words all around the house, but it's ideal to have a few, opposite the toilet is a good place! We have printable individual words for this purpose for reception keywords and high frequency words. Just scroll a little down the page and you will see them.

4) Combine with physical activities - For those who learn more actively, try using the words as part of a modified hopscotch, or involved with play, driving cars to the word, or scooter to words and back as a race. 

5) Sentences and pictures - Once you have a few keywords, you can start to join them together to start simple sentences, ideal so the words aren't seen in isolation. If you want to, combine with drawing a picture to match the sentence and play a guessing game.

If you want more details, here is the original article which also contains the printable resources, including the flash cards to play the games. 

Not based on keywords but based on different topics, including dinosaurs, and fairies, we also have printable word games, which includes word searches and word matches. 

Also if you're child's reading is progressing, they're heading towards reading chapter books, and you're not sure where to start, we have suggestions and reviews about a variety of different books, including  First chapter books for boys, and Fairy chapter books.

We hope these ideas and resources are useful to you. If there are any other resources you would like to see on the website please get in touch. Leave us a comment below, or contact us.