POPCORN WORDS OR HIGH FRECUENCY WORDS
This year, our Primary School readers use a lot of different ways to become more fluent readers. One of the most important ways to do that is to be able to read and
recognize Popcorn words.
What are Popcorn Words?
Sight words refer to
the words that are most frequently used and repeated in books, which is why
sight words are also sometimes referred to as “high-frequency” words. The same
words are also sometimes called “popcorn words.” The phrase popcorn words refers to the fact that
students should be able to just pop those words out every time they see them.
It’s estimated that same 100 or so words
make up more than fifty-percent of the text that students read. It sounds
rather implausible until you consider that sight words are often the small,
easily recognizable words like “a, I, or, and, the” and so forth (adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions and verbs).
Why is this so important?
When a reader masters popcorn words, they are able to understand at least half of the words in a particular text. Beyond this, popcorn words offer important clues about the meaning of a sentence.
