Rapid word reading and flash card drills: what they do and how to run a 5-minute routine

What rapid word reading is

It goes by several names, including flash card practice, speed drills and automaticity practice. The idea is simple: the adult shows a card, the child says the word, and the card goes away. England's Reading Framework describes the goal as reading familiar words "at a glance", meaning accurately and silently, without consciously saying the sounds. A footnote adds that the phrase does not mean children should be taught to memorize whole words.

The Framework is realistic about how this happens. A few pupils sound out and blend a word once and then read it at a glance. Most have to decode it aloud several times, in different contexts, before it becomes familiar. Drills are one way to supply those repetitions. Reading the same words again in real texts is the other.

What it is for, and what it is not for

The What Works Clearinghouse practice guide for kindergarten through third grade says that learning to recognize frequent words quickly speeds up reading and leaves more attention for meaning. For regular words, it has students use their letter-sound skills to work out the word first, then practice reading it often until they recognize it quickly. Drills therefore sit after decoding, not in place of it. For reading connected text rather than single words, see the guide to reading fluency.

Rapid word reading is not a way to teach children to recognize words by their shape. The practice guide discourages guessing from the first letters or from a picture, because guessing will not work with more advanced texts. If a child is shown a word they have not yet learned to decode, a quick flash invites exactly that guess.

The guide on sight words covers which words children are usually asked to learn by heart and how to keep that list short.

A 5-minute routine

Here is a routine you can adjust. The five minutes and the number of cards are suggestions from Lulio, not figures from the sources. Pick eight to ten items your child has recently met and mostly reads correctly, with a few they still hesitate over. The practice guide describes the same mix: a small number of recently introduced words, including some the children are beginning to recognize and some they still struggle with.

Show the cards one at a time and give your child a few seconds. The practice guide's card game uses a countdown. Children take turns identifying each word within 3 seconds, then 2 seconds, then 1 second, then immediately. Words read correctly go in one pile. Words missed are read to the child and go in a pile to teach again at the end. At home, after you say a missed word, have your child sound it out with you before the card goes back in the deck.

Run the deck a second time a little faster, then finish with a sentence or two that contains some of the words. In a sentence, your child reads the words for what they mean rather than as separate cards. Stop on a success. A timer is optional: the countdown is a prompt to keep going, not a test of your child.

The order to follow: word parts, decodable words, tricky words, phrases

Start with the sound-spelling pattern your child has just learned. The practice guide suggests introducing a pattern such as "th" with isolated words, then having children read texts that contain it. Cards can hold the pattern alone, then real words that use it. England's Reading Framework tells teachers not to have pupils read lots of pseudo-words to prepare for the Year 1 phonics screening check, a short test of 20 real words and 20 pseudo-words. It recommends more practice with familiar and unfamiliar real words. For a drill at home, real words are the better choice.

Tricky words come next, a few at a time. The practice guide recommends teaching irregular high-frequency words as whole words, for example "of" and "was", while limiting how many are introduced at once because learning them holistically places considerable demands on memory. Then comes length. For older children the guide suggests pointing to a familiar prefix, suffix or first syllable, saying that part, and then reading the whole word. The Reading Framework likewise asks for practice decoding multisyllabic words and those with rarer sound-spelling patterns.

The last step is the phrase, because text is not read word by word. The practice guide asks adults to model reading in meaningful phrases and to explain which words to emphasize. Cards with three or four words that belong together, such as "in the garden" or "after the rain", prepare for that.

Notes by grade and Year group

The practice guide covers kindergarten through third grade, and its card activities are written for those children. In kindergarten and grade 1 (Years 1 and 2 in England), cards match the sounds taught that week, and decodable texts are a good place to read the same words in a sentence. Keep the number of tricky words very small.

From grade 2 or 3 (Years 3 and 4), the children who benefit most can usually decode but still read slowly. Cards with longer words, words sharing a prefix or suffix, and short phrases are a better fit than single-syllable words. Rapid word reading then feeds into rereading texts. England's Reading Framework cites the Standards and Testing Agency: around 90 words per minute is a good indicator that pupils start to read with enough fluency to focus on understanding. The guide to words per minute by grade gives the US figures.

In grades 4 and 5, most of the practice should move to rereading, with cards kept for the few words that keep tripping a reader.

A version with no screen

Cut ten cards from cardboard and write one item on each in large, clear letters. Slide a sheet of paper over the card and pull it back to show the word for a moment, or simply flip cards over. For tricky words, the "Star Words" routine described in the sight words guide spreads the practice over the week.

Five minutes is enough, before or after ten minutes of reading a day. The point of the cards is the text that follows them, so do not let the drill grow longer than the reading.

Common mistakes

The first is flashing words a child cannot decode. The second is urging speed. England's Reading Framework says that urging pupils to read at speed will not increase their fluency, because they can read only at the speed they can decode. A child chasing the cards starts to guess. A third is a deck that is too long, or one that adds many tricky words at once.

Two more are worth avoiding. End each session with the words in a sentence or a short text, since the practice guide pairs word practice with connected text every day. And when your child misreads a word they should know, the practice guide suggests pausing so they can fix it. If they do not notice, read the sentence back exactly as they said it and ask "Did that make sense?" Handing over the right word straight away teaches less.