How do you teach sight words to a child who cannot hold on to them?

The old advice was to memorize sight words by their shape, and for a struggling reader that rarely sticks. What holds is mapping the word to its sounds: say it, break it into sounds, match each sound to its letters, and mark the one tricky part that simply has to be remembered. Even irregular words are mostly regular, and teaching the regular part first gives the memory something to hang on to.

For the tutors and teachers here: how do you teach the high-frequency and irregular words, the ones that do not sound out neatly? Flashcards, word mapping, spelling them aloud, a wall of them? What finally made them stay?

This is the routine behind our guide on word mapping, and the daily version of it inside Lillory. But the working systems in this room are worth as much as any of that.