Oh Beautiful Sight Words!

As many teachers know, in order for students to be a good reader, they need to have a large storehouse of sight words. This means they can recognize sight words and read them with automaticity, instead of trying to sound them out.

Why is this important? Because most texts are made up of 50% sight words! Without sight word knowledge, reading can become a very frustrating task for a child and they might even give up. That is the last thing we, as teachers, want them to do. Therefore, teaching students sight words, and helping them master sight words, becomes a critical component in our instruction.

Once students have a large storehouse of sight words, their confidence grows, their fluency increases and so does their comprehension. So how does one teach sight words effectively?

There are a lot of different things a teacher can do to teach sight words. Magnetic letters to build the words, songs that teach the spelling of the sight word, salt writing, chalk writing, oral sentences, flash cards and games (just to name a few). All of the above are a few of the strategies that I use in my classroom but this year I felt I needed something more.

I remembered when my son had been in kindergarten with the amazing Lyndsey Jarman and started going through his stuff to see what she had done. I found his Power Words book and realized this is exactly what I was looking for! The Power Words book will help me achieve the goals that I have set for myself and my students in sight words this year.

So I printed a set of the My Power Words books for my kindergarten students to use in the classroom. Two weeks into it, I have loved it! I spread it out over the entire week. On Monday, I will introduce the new sight word. I read it, write it, use magnetic letters to build it, locate it in a sentence and read it on a poster. The next day we follow the same pattern but now the students have the opportunity to take some ownership of the sight word. They will rainbow write the bubble letters and practice writing it on their own in the middle. On Wednesday they use the second line to trace the letters in a word as we sing the sight word song as a class. We continue to follow the same procedures we started on Monday, but with the gradual release to the students being in charge and leading us through the process.

On Thursday, I want to see if they can spell it on their own so we cover up the top two rows to see what happens. This also helps me to know what students are remembering about our sight word. By Friday, I want them to be experts on the sight word. This isn’t always possible for every student, so I will continue to work with those students who need extra time. There are three different sets of My Power Words so if you need to switch things around to match the order your class does sight words, it’s completely doable. I love how easy they are to put together and even better, they can be used as a keepsake for parents! It’s always fun to see what your child did in kindergarten, even ten years later!

By Contributor Jennifer Dajany

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