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 Kindergarden. 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 the way I did. She sells videos to help teach children to memorize words.
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.
I created and shared some free "sight" word flashcards with tips for sounding out to print on the back in a previous post. I hope it helps some parents and teachers get children started using letter sounds to read words rather than memorize like my daughter. 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 another resource for sale to teach memorizing sight words. It's very cute, but I hope you print the free flashcards with tips to help a child sound out words.
I know I promised to make a post sharing ways to teach with these flashcards. There will be a series of posts next.
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I believe in finding a middle ground and using what works. If a child learns a few words by sight and it helps a child read, great!
Experienced readers do know many words by sight. Learning to read starts with letters. 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 and read related posts.
I'm involved in two discussions on the subject of teaching sight words. Do you have opinions? Do you have experiences or information to share? Check them out.
Do you teach sight words by sounding out the parts that can be sounded out? This is a discussion I started at WE TEACH. I'd love to hear your insights!
Blog reader question This is a discussion in my Beginning Reading Help BlogFrog community started by Amanda from The Educator's Spin on It. Visit the link and see if you have some answers or insight.
