Sight words, often also called high frequency words, are commonly used words that young children are encouraged to memorize as a whole by sight, so that they can automatically recognize these words in print without having to use any strategies to decode. Sight words account for a large percentage (up to 75%) of the words used in beginning children's print materials. The advantage for children being able to recognize sight words automatically is that a beginning reader will be able to identify the majority of words in a beginning text before they even attempt to read it; therefore allowing the child to concentrate on meaning as they read without having to stop and decode (sound out) every single word. Recognizing sight words automatically is advantageous for beginning readers because many of these words have unusual spelling patterns, cannot be sounded out using basic phonics knowledge and cannot be represented using pictures.
At the beginning of every month Team Awesome is introduced to anywhere between 6 and 10 new sight words and we practice them every day for that month before putting them up on our Word Wall and getting new ones. That means the children have been directly exposed to the words at least 20 times in the month but often more than that as we use them in our writing and point them out when reading. Sometimes the words are theme related, like 'love' in February, or sometimes a word is chosen because a child has been using and/or spelling it incorrectly in their own writing repeatedly but more often sight words are chosen because they are the most frequently used words in beginning texts and it is important that Team Awesome is familiar with them.
I have been neglectful in that I have not been posting the sight words we have been learning every month. If you would like to practice these words at home, please do so but keep in mind that it should be kept fun and light and not drill and kill as we want to keep the children interested. There are many sight word games to be found and printed off the internet, many of which allow you to insert your own words, or sites such as starfall.com have online games. These are perfect for practice as Team Awesome loves games.
The sight words we have been working on since September are:
a am and are big boy be can car did do fun from go girl he has I is in it like little look love my me no on she see the to up was we will you yes
At the beginning of every month Team Awesome is introduced to anywhere between 6 and 10 new sight words and we practice them every day for that month before putting them up on our Word Wall and getting new ones. That means the children have been directly exposed to the words at least 20 times in the month but often more than that as we use them in our writing and point them out when reading. Sometimes the words are theme related, like 'love' in February, or sometimes a word is chosen because a child has been using and/or spelling it incorrectly in their own writing repeatedly but more often sight words are chosen because they are the most frequently used words in beginning texts and it is important that Team Awesome is familiar with them.
I have been neglectful in that I have not been posting the sight words we have been learning every month. If you would like to practice these words at home, please do so but keep in mind that it should be kept fun and light and not drill and kill as we want to keep the children interested. There are many sight word games to be found and printed off the internet, many of which allow you to insert your own words, or sites such as starfall.com have online games. These are perfect for practice as Team Awesome loves games.
The sight words we have been working on since September are:
a am and are big boy be can car did do fun from go girl he has I is in it like little look love my me no on she see the to up was we will you yes
