When it comes to reading everybody awares of the fact how important is to teach children the high-frequency words. Although there are thousands of words in the English language, it is only a couple of hundreds that we use frequently.

There are so many reasons why to teach children to read these high-frequency words but one of the most important one is that these words don't fit in the commonly taught phonics and children are only able to recognise them by sight. Also if they can recognise them by sight it makes them read faster and easier in long term. Another reason to teach these words is although they don't usually have meanings on their own but they make the other words understandable or they alternate their meanings.

The question is how to help students to learn high-frequency words without being boring or uninteresting for them.

1. Print out and laminate some sets of ten high frequency words and play treasure hunt with them.

2. With the same sets children can also play memory game.

3. Every student can have a set of words that they lay on their desks. You give them clues to find and point to the right word, like this word begins with a 'd' and it is the opposite of up (down).

4. Play Snakes and Ladders boardgame with them.

5. For practicing spelling they can write the words on lines shaped and coloured as a rainbow.

6. With scribble and write they can also practice the spelling. To make it a bit more exciting, use different colours with different words.

7. Enjoy playing High-frequency words bingo with your students.

8. Take some old newspaperor magazines to school and make children find and circle the given high-frequency words. Circle different words with different colours and get some exciting, colourful newspaper at the end of the game. You can even make a competition out of it. Whoever finds the most words wins.

Which one have you tried or will you try with your children? Any other ideas to teach high-frequency words? Leave your comment below!

The 8 awesome tips to teach high-frequency wordsby Lili Thomson published on Miss T. ESL