Primary School Prep DIY Guide Reading -Page 2

 SINGLE WORDS

 

Chose topics/words

Now that you know how to make up the flash cards, the next step is identifying which words to write on the flash cards. 

 

There should be a mixture of the following types of words: 

 

• Nouns  

• Proper nouns (names of family members) 

• Verbs  

• Adjectives 

• Adverbs  

• Sight words / high frequency words  

 

The majority of the words should be nouns that can easily be associated with a picture. There are no hard and fast rules but at least sixty percent of the words that you show should be nouns. To help you identify nouns to use, below is a list of categories that you can choose from: 

 

1. Parts of the body  

2. Family member names  

3. Objects in your home  

4. Types of fruit and other foods 

5. Animals  

These are just examples of categories, don’t restrict yourself to them.  

 

Also include verbs, and in particular, action words such as:  

1. walking  

2. jumping  

3. running  

 

Also include adverbs such as:  

1. slowly  

2. quickly  

 

And adjectives like: 

 

1. big 

2. small  

3. tall 

4. short 

5. red 

6. blue 

7. green  

 

Include sight words and high frequency words also. Sight words are the 100 most common words that appear the most in any text. For example:  

1. I 

2. no 

3. at 

 

There are also high frequency words that children are expected to know as they advance in  school years, that go beyond the 100 sight words. It is ideal to include these also, as knowing them at the preschool age will give your child a great advantage.  

 

Using a google search, you will be able to identify sight words, high frequency words, nouns, etc.  

 

It is important that you have a mixture of all these types of words as it is important for when you get to the next stage of couplets, phrases and sentences.  

 

We advise that before starting to prepare the flash cards that you use an excel spreadsheet or word documents to plan a list of the types of words that you intend to show your child. Make sure that it has all these types of words and then make up the flash cards from the list of words that you have available.