St Ambrose Barlow Catholic Primary School High Frequency Words Third

What Actually Gets Used in the Classroom

High frequency word lists are the backbone of early literacy programmes. Every primary school has one, and most of them overlap significantly because they draw from the same government frameworks. The third edition of the St Ambrose Barlow Catholic Primary School High Frequency Words list follows that pattern but with some specific selections that reflect what actually works when you are standing in front of a year one or two class trying to get children reading before the end of term. This is a curated selection of words that appear most often in early reading texts. The list is divided into cohorts, with the third set containing words that children typically encounter after they have secured the first two stages. These are not random words. They have been chosen based on frequency data from real classroom reading materials and standardised phonics assessments across a network of Catholic primary schools in the North West of England. The core word list includes things like the, said, were, could, would, should, through, enough, thought, brought, round, found, about, because, much, such, just, only, into, over, when, where, than, then, there, these, those, between, under, behind, above, again, once, always, never, really, other, another, several, some, any, many, all, both, each, few, more, most, few, least, same, such. That last batch sits in the third group specifically because they are function words that trip children up even when they can sound out most decodable texts perfectly.

How the List Actually Works in Practice

I spent seven years running daily phonics sessions with mixed ability year ones and twos. The way I approached these lists was straightforward and not particularly clever. Each morning we did a five minute flash card rotation. Thirty seconds per word. The child says the word, writes it, and uses it in a sentence. That is it. No games, no reward charts, no elaborate routines. The problem that caught me out consistently was the word the. It is the single most frequent word in English. Every child on this list knows it by heart. But when they encounter it inside a decodable text, they frequently misread it as the, the, the, or even she because the visual similarity between the grapheme clusters tricks them. I spent an entire half term working on just that word before I realised I was approaching it wrong. What actually worked was placing the word inside short phrases on the board and having the children read the whole phrase rather than the isolated word. "the boy", "the egg", "the one", "the up". Seeing the variation in vowel sounds within the word helped them stop treating it as a single rigid shape. Another word that causes genuine problems is said. It should be pronounced sed but children will read it as side every single time unless you actively intervene. The list includes it in the third cohort precisely because it is a sight word that resists phonetic decoding at this stage. You teach it as an exception word, not a trick. Calling it a trick just confuses children who are still building their confidence in phonics.

Download and Distribution Details

The full list is available through the school website and the wider Multi Academy Trust resource portal. You can find the pdf version by navigating to the teaching and learning section, then phonics resources, then high frequency words. The file is called HFW_Cohort3_2024_v3.pdf. There is also a separate printable flashcard pack that includes the word on one side and a simple illustration on the other. Those illustrations are deliberately plain because overly detailed images actually distract young readers. A picture of a table helps less than a simple line drawing of four legs and a flat surface. Several other schools in the Diocese of Lancaster have adopted modified versions of this list. The modifications are minor. Some have swapped out a handful of words based on their local text sets, but the overall structure remains identical. If you are using a different phonics programme than Phase 2 or Phase 3 of Letters and Sounds, you may find that certain words on this list appear earlier or later in your sequence. That is normal. The St Ambrose Barlow Catholic Primary School High Frequency Words Third list assumes a standard phonics progression.

What This List Cannot Do

High frequency word lists are not a substitute for phonics instruction. I have seen schools treat the list as a complete reading strategy and it does not work. Children who memorise the words visually but cannot decode unfamiliar words fall behind rapidly once the texts become more complex. The list supports decoding. It does not replace it. Expecting otherwise is a mistake I watch repeat every year across the country. There is also a ceiling to how useful these lists are for children with specific language impairments or dyslexia. For those learners, the standard three cohort approach often needs to be stretched across a full academic year or more. Rushing through the third cohort because the second cohort was completed in eight weeks leaves gaps that become painful later. One child I worked with spent six weeks on just five words from the third group before she could reliably read them in connected text. That is not slow progress. That is appropriate pacing. If you need a supplementary resource for children who are falling behind, the Don't Crash the Bus programme by Kate Belsford covers the same words with a different sequencing approach. It is worth trying if the standard list is not sticking. The St Ambrose Barlow Catholic Primary School High Frequency Words Third list is solid for the majority of learners. It is not designed for every learner, and pretending it is will create problems further down the line.

What the Third Cohort Actually Looks Like Week by Week

Typically you would introduce three new words per session across two or three sessions per week. That gives you roughly twenty words per fortnight. The list contains approximately sixty words in the third cohort, so you are looking at about eight to ten weeks of dedicated practice if you are moving at a reasonable pace. Some schools compress this into six weeks. That usually means the words are not secure, and you find yourself recycling them throughout year two anyway. The words that consistently need the most time are the ones that look regular but behave irregularly. Thought, through, enough, rough, bough. Five words that share the ou grapheme but produce five completely different sounds. Children who can read through perfectly will read though as though and then reverse it the next day. This is not a memory problem. It is a phonics pattern recognition problem. You need to teach the alternative pronunciations of ou explicitly rather than assuming the word will stick after one or two exposures. The list also contains several words that are homophones of other words on earlier cohorts. Your /you're/ and your distinction does not matter for reading but it matters enormously for spelling, and children on this list are expected to use the words correctly in their writing by the end of year two. That is a higher expectation than the list itself suggests. You may need to build in separate spelling sessions for the problematic pairs.

Practical Tips That Come from Actually Using This

Do not test the full list at once. A twenty word dictation at the start of the cohort phase is not useful. Most children will recall five words from the previous cohort and eight from the current one if they have had any exposure. The rest will be blanks. This is normal. It does not mean the child has not learned anything. It means retention is gradual and uneven. Use the words in context immediately. Writing them in isolation is fine for a quick check but it does not build reading fluency. Have the children find the word in a book, underline it in a passage, or create a sentence that makes sense. The moment a word is used correctly in context, it moves from memorised to functional. Track individual progress rather than whole class averages. The whole class average on the third cohort will look fine while three children in the back are still reading the as the and the other three are reading could as co-old. Individual tracking catches this. A simple spreadsheet with dates and scores per word does the job adequately.