Most sight word learning resources and activities do not show how to sound out the words.
My children were taught "sight words" this way in school. Five new unrelated words were taught each week in Kindergarten. My children were taught to memorize words. Flashcards were sent home for practice. I went along with this way of teaching, but I missed an opportunity to help my children read words.
Here's a video of a mom practicing "sight word" flashcards. She sells videos to help teach children to memorize words. There are too many words to memorize!
My oldest son was reading before Kindergarden. He's ten now. My youngest are boy/girl twins. They are eight now. I began questioning sight word learning when my daughter fell behind her twin brother toward the middle of first grade. You can read about my daughter's problems with reading by clicking on the highlighted words. What I discovered was my visual daughter looked in the air when reading to remember a word by shape and guessed at hard words. She ignored letters. Reading was all about guessing and memorizing. When books got harder she was required to read words, but she didn't know how.
The Reading Genie explains the process involved in learning to read words in a way that helped me understand it the best. He's a reading teacher, so you have to skim through the technical language to find the information you want. He shared a study that found children who are taught to sound out a word can recognize the word much quicker than a child who is taught the word by sight alone.
Here's a video by someone who has a strong opinion.
A good friend and fellow blogger has addressed the area of sight word learning on her blog.
Here's a post from Becky at This Reading Mama you may want to check out.
9 comments:
My daughter has the same problem with memorizing shapes. I'll have to work with her more on sounding out!
Interesting post. I know I prefer not to teach sight words in isolation-- because some kids will never be able to memorize the visual form of the word in that way. However, for many kids, I do think they can memorize the word when they see it repeated within continuous text. If I'm teaching the word said, I'll find a very repeatitive book and then I'll have the child locate the word several times in the book.
Thanks for your comment Jackie. I'm flexible when it comes to teaching. Whatever works the best is my philosophy. I think many early readers have a few words they have learned from sight. It's a little like training wheels. Expecting a very young child to sound out every word is too much. Sometimes knowing a word by sight and guessing at some words lets an early reader read more books and have fun with reading. There comes a time when the training wheels come off and a child is really reading.
Memorizing words caused my daughter and quite a few other children I know to ignore letters, so I'm hoping to help change too much memorizing words as whole units when most if not all can be sounded out.
There are kids who are fast learner and there are some who have difficulty in learning.
Great post! I am not a huge fan of flash cards, but do like teaching sight words with word walls as you can talk about many different aspects of a word as you place it and interact with it. There is no one-size-fits all approach to reading though and I am always open to trying to figure out how each kid learns best! Jackie - I too have kids look for sight words in the book!
Thanks so much for your comment, Lovingmama! Word walls draw attention to the letters and phonics rules of words which I think is helpful. The flashcards I'm sharing may be simple enough for busy parents to do some of the things teachers are able to do with word walls.
Whoops - read my last comment and didn't mean to seem against flash cards! They are part of the equation and some kids respond well to memorizing sight words with them! I've used them lots too and love them in connection with other activities!!! My favorite is to have a removable word wall where kids can take their "flash cards" back to their desks to use as spelling help when they are writing!
No worries, Lovingmama. I did not take it that way. I'm not sensitive. All points of view are welcome. Any comments or difference of opinions are welcome on my blog. How can we learn from each other if we only nod in agreement and don't speak our mind?
Michelle, thanks for linking to me. I'm honored!
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