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Recognition of regular and irregular words
Following are examples of effective procedures to support students to read regular and
irregular words.
Teachers may use published lists of frequently occurring words to select words for instruction.
Recognition of regular words
The teacher:
• provides extensive practice of identifying and
to read words
in isolation and in texts
• prepares students to read words automatically (as ‘sight words’) by instructing students
to sound out ‘in their head’ and say the word out loud. This should be undertaken with
words that students are able to fluently ‘sound out’
• draws attention to the orthographic representation of words (ie the order of letters in
words/the shape of words)
• assists students to remember words by programming corresponding:
– spelling, copying and writing activities (Rose 2006)
– match-to-sample activities
– games such as Concentration, Snap, Fish
• decreases the amount of time between presenting a word and prompting the student
to say the word to increase fluency.
Recognition of irregular words
The teacher:
• models reading irregular words (words that are difficult to work out using letter–sound
relationships) as sight words, eg ‘This word says
the.
I do not sound it out. I remember
how it looks. I look at the word and say
the .
’
• introduces high-frequency irregular words (such as ‘the’, ‘here’, ‘was’, ‘where’, ‘use’ etc)
before irregular words that occur less frequently in text, emphasising that they are words
we don’t sound out but say straight away
• uses the texts that students are reading to determine the order of introduction of
irregular words
• separates similar words or words that may cause confusion, eg was–saw, of–off, were–where
• teaches words which include the same word parts and sound the same (rhyme) together,
eg some–come, do–to, go–so
• reinforces the visual features of a word
• provides a high level of exposure and practice for target words.
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Support Materials for Students with Special Education Needs
English K–6
R
eading
IMPLEMENTATION