Recently, my district adopted a new literacy curriculum. Along with the curriculum, came a literacy consultant who we meet with bi-monthly to discuss best practices. The past two times she's come, high frequency words have come up in our discussions.
Currently, four year old kindergarten, kindergarten, and first grade all have "cute" names for our Fry words. In our district, 4K calls them "heart words" (words to know by heart), kindergarten calls them "popcorn words" (word that pop up when reading), first grade calls them "sight words" (words to read by sight). Our new literacy curriculum calls them "snap words" (words you can read in a snap) and the consultant recommends that we consolidate all of the synonyms and use the same label for high frequency words 4K- 1st grade.
I saw this image last night on a kindergarten blog I follow and it made me think of this "great debate" that's going on at work.
I am wondering, what do other schools call their high frequency words? Should we all use one label? Should we use them interchangeably, as we do with so many other words when we're talking with our students. We are trying to build their vocabularies, is this another set of words for students to add to their growing vocabularies & schemas? Are we confusing them with so many names for the same thing?
Let me know your thoughts!
Cassandra
