This blog post was taken from an Ask Diana live post. We are going to explore a range of tips and also myths surrounding sight words.
Tip Number 1
Start your young students that are transitioning to literacy, by teaching the prerequisite skills first so that they understand this and have the skills to process words. What are those skills?
- They need to know most of the alphabet sounds (rather than letter names).
- They also require the phonemic awareness skill of blending so that they understand how a word is formed.
It makes no sense, that with young children we are sending home sight words before they have developed those two important prerequisite skills.
Tip Number 2
In the early early stages of learning to read, I do not recommend providing mixed lists of sight words. This common approach, typically causes stress as it is the more complicated approach to EARLY sight word learning. Your alternative is to group words so that rather than a random range of words, that actually you are developing a word attack strategy that can be applied to a group of the high frequency words.
I’m not going to get into which set of Sight Words because there’s a range of sets of sight words but what you need to do regardless of what sort of sight words you’re using is group them so that you’re giving your students a strategy to master that set of sight words.
- Firstly cluster the regular words that are decodable. (These you may choose to colour code as green.)
- Second, I would cluster all of the words that you can still use a decoding principle but students will need to ‘stop and think’ because there is one element of irregularity. (These you may choose to colour code as orange.)
- Thirdly you have words which require phonic knowledge. This set of words make sense when digraphs and phonic concepts have been taught. Most words in this category are regular, but students require the phonic knowledge. (These you may choose to colour code as blue.)
- Finally the words which are highly irregular, a visual strategy will be required.
Tip Number 3,
Start with your regular decodable words first. Then gradually start adding the remaining groups of words. The colour coding principal is highly recommended.
Tip Number 4
Know your theory, what does the theory on sight words actually tell us? Sight words have always been supported in the research as a method of assisting the acquisition of early reading. While sight words are commonly applied as spelling words, in the literature it is for early reading that they are recommended.
Tip Number 5
Are sight words relevant to middle and upper primary, technically no, because sight words were set up for early reading.
If you are teaching upper primary, and you have students present with junior primary reading ability, then sight words are going to be relevant.
Tip Number 6
How do we assess sight words, be very clear whether you’re assessing reading or selling and/or you separate the reading from the spelling. You will find assessments for both reading and spelling inside the PLD best seller: The Phonic Sight Word Sequence. (Web Site Code: Bpsw).
This blog post was taken from one of our Ask Diana videos, a question that came from a teacher. For more information, we would suggest the online course, Synthetic Phonics in the Junior School, or Teaching Children To Learn To Read Spell And Write.
Keep staying updated with our range of videos on YouTube, plus the Ask Diana posts that are live videos and relevant to specific questions.