Learning Opportunities

This self-paced asynchronous, online course is approximately 90 minutes in length. You have until June 15th to complete it. 

Participants can find the recording link and handouts in the confirmation email received immediately following registration.

Do you find yourself struggling to teach high frequency words? Are there successful methods beyond flashcards and memorization? We know how important it is for students to be able to easily read and write these words, but since their spelling doesn’t generally fit the patterns we expect, it can be a challenge. While their spelling is not always straightforward, these words can always be explained. In the explanation lies the growing understanding of English orthography. According to the Oxford English Corpus (OEC), the 100 most-commonly-occurring English words make up approximately half of the words we use. Imagine the power of helping beginning readers, and really any age reader, to develop automatic recognition of one in every two words they read! If a student can also automatically spell this bank of words and understand their usage, they can direct their focus more heavily on the content vocabulary and syntax needed to express their ideas in their writing. In this workshop we will walk you through a better way to teach high frequency words. We will introduce a teaching routine that is straightforward and simple to follow, and we will put it into practice with a few words such as people and any. This routine, along with the study of 100 hfws, can be found in our co-authored resource, The hfw Project.