Teaching sight words is a great way for kids to feel good about themselves and words they just know.
I think it’s dumb to have steps, as all of these pretty-well flow into each other. A lot of the books I read tended to either go straight for sounding out, or straight for sight words (obviously, some words are ONLY sight words), but I felt it was important for us to move to a phase where we weren’t sounding EVERY word out, that there are a lot of words we’d just know “by sight”. So, while we were starting with the small books, we started sight words flashcards.
Go to your local teacher store/Amazon and look at the sight words packs. Some people believe sight words are JUST words that kids can’t sound out. I too believe those are sight words, but again — I wanted them to know basic words really fast. Words like and, the, they — stuff like that.
With P I actually made some extra flashcards from the 100 most used words. Once you can see those words and know what they are you’re golden. My sight words pack didn’t have all those, so made a few extras.
Again, most of this is flash cards, and I used candy as my reward for such a tedious task. Shoot me. If anyone has better ideas, I’m ALL ears, but stickers just didn’t cut it for flashcards.
We did do a few games, like hiding them and yelling out the name when you find it, or looking for words that we knew in the local newspaper. Kids feel confidence when they learn sight words as you are teaching reading.
Check out my other reading steps:
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