#Teaching sight words full#

While I think hands-on activities are engaging and fun, I also think it is important to provide paper and pencil practice too. Then, your kiddos can easily use their word rings to practice their words with whatever activities you have set out. Punch holes in the cards and put them on a ring. Simply, give each kid a set of flashcards with the first 5-10 words they missed on your assessment. Independent practice is also easy to differentiate. Independent Sight Word Practice Is Easy to Differentiate

Using a white crayon to write their sight words and painting over them with watercolors.

Creating their words with yarn, pipe cleaners, or pieces of straws.Writing the words in colored sand, salt, or shaving cream in a tray.Writing or building words with play dough.Independent practice provides this extra repetition and it’s also a great opportunity to get kids engaged by using some fun hands-on activities. Kids need more practice to truly master their sight words…to the point that they can easily recognize them in context as well as spell and write them. And, the 2-5 words you introduce each week shouldn’t be the only words that your students are practicing. Doing sight word read the room activitiesīut, these shouldn’t be the only way your students practice their sight words.There’re Lots Ways To Introduce And Practice Sight Words And, direct instruction is an important part of getting kids to be able to read and recognize their sight words. If most of the class already knows a word, teach it in your small reading groups.ĭirect instruction should focus on 2-5 new words per week. If a lot of kids don’t know the word, teach it to the whole class. Personally, I think it’s important to teach sight words through large group and small group direct instruction as well as independent work.

#Teaching sight words full#

But, sometimes individualizing our lessons just feels like ONE MORE THING on an already too full to-do list.īut, using a combined instructional method makes it manageable. You Can Easily Differentiate Your Sight Word Teachingĭifferentiation… It’s a buzzword. Maybe even let your kid pick a silly voice to read the words in. (Pro tip: Write your checklist in the same order you will teach the words.) Write numbers on the back to help you quickly put your cards back in order if they get out of order. Keep your flashcards in the same order as your checklist.That’s enough to tell you what to work on. For progress checks and instructional planning, it’s okay to stop assessing once a kid misses 10 words. If you’re going to assess the whole list, don’t assess it all every time.If they don’t know it in 3-5 seconds move on to the next word. Here are a couple of tips for quick and easy sight word assessment. Remember, when you’re assessing sight words if they can’t read it almost immediately (3-5 seconds max) they haven’t memorized it fully. With that knowledge, you can plan what words to introduce to the whole class and what words might be better to introduce in guided reading groups or even one on one. Or, maybe only a handful of kids need some words. You might be thrilled to find out there are words everyone in your class knows. Efficient Sight Word Instruction Starts With Assessmentīefore you start teaching sight words, it’s really helpful to know what your kiddos already know. So, let’s chat about quick and easy ways to teach them more efficiently. Whether you’re teaching in a general education classroom or in a special education setting, sight words are probably one of the things you’re covering. Then, I developed a system to work smarter not harder. Keeping up with who knew which words stressed me out at first. Rarely if ever did more than two kiddos need the same set of sight words at the same time. Kids need to quickly recognize sight words so they can read and write with fluency because they make up more than half of the material that kids read.īack when I was teaching as a special education teacher, most of my kiddos had an IEP goal for learning their sight words. Along with name writing and colors, they’re one of the first things kids learn in school. Sight words… They’re kind of a big deal AND for good reason.