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Learning the most commonly occurring words by heart is a very effective way of improving reading and spelling efficiency. 

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The aim is to make reading and spelling of these words automatic - that means that children can read and spell them 'without thinking.' Once again, the key is practice. 

Page coming soon!

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Don't Pick Pete

Fill in the board with the words you are practising. 

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Player one secretly picks Pete and writes it down. 

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Player two guesses words. You get a counter each time you guess a word which isn't Pete. When you guess Pete, add up the counters you have so far. 

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Swap roles and repeat. 

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Fortune Teller

Create a traditional fortune teller using High Frequency Words. As children play with it, they have to spell out the HFW too, which is great for extra practice. 

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You can give them to children ready made, but having children fold them themselves is excellent for fine motor skills practice. 

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Go Fish

Create a set of cards with the words you are practising. You can make pairs, threes or fours (depending upon how many words you want to practise). The picture above shows a focused set of words and a game I made with all 100 high frequency words. 

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Deal 5 cards to each player and put the rest in a pile. Children can find it really hard to hold cards, so I usually put up a book as a barrier then you can just lay cards flat on the table. 

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Make any pairs (or 3s or 4s) you can - make sure the child knows how many to make a set. Put any completed sets to the side. Then, player 1 asks player 2 for a card they need to complete a set. If player 2 has the card, they must hand it over. Repeat until player 2 does not have the requested card, then player 2 says 'Go Fish.' Player 1 picks up a card from the remaining pile, and then player 2 can ask player 1 for cards. 

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Keep going until you have used all of the cards. The winner is the person with the most sets.

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Snakes and Ladders

Simply write the HFW into the squares of a printable Snakes and Ladders board (the one shown is from Twinkl) and play as normal, reading every square that you pass. 

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Foam Zap

For this game, cut up a piece of foam into squares. It also works with lolly sticks. 

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Choose the words you want to practise, and write each one 3 or 4 times until you've used up most of the squares. Then create some bonus cards like:

'Pick 3', 'Pick 5' 'Go Again'

'Put 2 back' 'Put 5 back' 'Zap - put all back'

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Put the tiles into a tub or face down on the table and start a timer. Pick a tile, read it and keep it. If you get a bonus tile, follow the instructions. 

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Keep playing until the timer runs out. The game never ends because of the Zap tiles (make 2 of these for added jeopardy!), so you need to have a timer. It's good fun to play, as you could have twenty tiles then at the last second get a Zap and lose it all so children get very tense about which tile they are picking up! 

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Flashcard Fun

This downloadable gives some ideas for making flashcard practice more fun and works with any set of words. 

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