High frequency words are, as you'd expect, words that you come across frequently. This means that when children are reading, they'll see lots of these words. Therefore, it's important that children are able to read these words, pronounce them correctly, spell them, and understand what they mean within a sentence. Just as importantly, children will be using these words in their own writing, so learning them is an essential part of their literacy development.

Common exception words are words that appear commonly in both written and spoken language, but which don’t follow standard spelling rules. This makes learning to read and spell common exception words in key stage one vitally important for early reading and writing development.