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.
