decodable - Heart Words: Teaching Sight Words the Right Way
February 27, 2026
"The." "Said." "Was." "They." These little words appear on almost every page - and they cannot be sounded out the way "cat" or "mat" can. So your child memorizes them as sight words, and sometimes the whole thing collapses: "said" becomes "sad," "was" becomes "wuz," and you wonder if you should be drilling flashcards every night.
If this is your family, you are not alone. The good news: these words do not have to be memorized as random squiggles at all. The better news: there is a smarter way to teach them, and it is called the heart words method - the approach used in classrooms that follow the science of reading.
Here is the secret: even the "irregular" words have a regular part. In "said," the s and the d follow the rules. Only the ai is tricky - it makes a short e sound (like in "bed"), which is why the heart goes above it. The heart word method teaches the parts that follow the rules, then flags only the one part the child has to learn "by heart." Your child is not memorizing a whole weird word - they are decoding most of it and hearting just the surprise.
TRY THIS
Try the Heart Word Map - a zero-prep routine that turns a tricky word into a friend:
- Say the word. "Said." Then sound it out like a normal word, even though it will sound funny: "s-ai-d."
- Mark the regular parts. In "said," s and d behave. Your child reads those with the skills they already own.
- Heart the surprise. The ai (which says "eh", not "ay") gets the heart. Draw a little heart above the ai - that is the only piece to memorize.
MICRO-TIPS
- Start with the regular part. Almost every irregular word has decodable pieces; find and celebrate them first.
- One heart at a time. Focus on the single unexpected sound, not the whole word - it makes the word feel beatable.
- Heart it, then read it in context. A heart word read inside a real sentence sticks far better than a flashcard row.
- Use high-frequency lists sparingly. A handful of heart words a week beats a wall of them.
- Keep the hearts light. Draw hearts with a pencil, laugh at the silly sounds, keep it a game.
A NOTE FOR YOU
If your child has been staring at flashcards without progress, it is not your fault - they were asked to memorize words as if they had no logic at all. Heart words hand the logic back. Your child already knows the sounds; now they only need to carry one small heart per word, and even that heart is a stepping stone to the day the whole word becomes automatic. Give yourself permission to take a breath. You are not behind on sight words - you are simply swapping a guessing game for a system, and the system works.
Warmly,
- The Decodable Team
Sources & Further Reading