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At the end of the two minutes, have him read the list to you. Set the timer and give your child two minutes to find as many sight words as he can. Write sight words on index cards, and hide them around the house. Here is a simple post from that shows you how. You can find many different commercial sight-word bingo games, or you can make your own. Using these lists, try out some of these simple sight-word activities at home. If you aren't sure which words to work on with your children, you can check with their classroom teacher or find the Dolch word lists here. Of all the various reading strategies, I find working on sight words to be the easiest for parents to get involved in. So now that we know what they are, why they are important, and what they can do, we need to figure out how parents can help. Sight-word knowledge provides a scaffold of understanding and confidence for new readers who need to use all the other tools in their tool box to complete the job at hand: reading with understanding. One of my educational philosophies is to build children's confidence up and then present an attainable challenge. There is more to why sight words are important than just simply the mechanics of reading they are also fantastic confidence boosters. They are also able to understand the majority of the text if those decoding skills fail. It allows kids to free up cognitive resources so they can focus on the tougher words that require strong decoding skills. Working hard to learn these words by sight (memorizing) pays off. On the flip side, the wonderful thing about these words being so common is that children learn them easily with repetition because they are usually words that they already have in their everyday vocabulary. Can you illustrate "is" or "it?" Me neither. They are often also difficult to illustrate, so children can't use illustrations in picture books to make a deeper connection to these words. But many of the words also defy standard phonetic conventions, meaning they are impossible to sound out. You might think that these words are so common that kids would just learn them organically through reading and other everyday print. Some of the words cannot be decoded using conventional strategies so memorizing them until they are known by sight is beneficial. They are a list of 220 words that are used so often in print that together they make up an estimated 75% of all words used in books. Edward William Dolch first compiled the full list and broke it down into five levels for children to learn by sight. Just to confuse you, when you see lists of sight words what you are usually seeing are lists of high frequency words or Dolch Words. That's not usually how the term is used, though. His sight words are the words that he can already recognize by sight without using any specific strategies. The more ways you can get words in front of a child, the quicker they’ll pick them up.First let's define what sight words are. Reading, writing, recognizing, and utilizing sight words requires repetition and plenty of practice. Practice, practice, practice: this brings us to the most important aspect practice.Songs and rhymes: a catchy tune, story, or rhythmic poem using sight words or spelling them out will get the words stuck in their heads which creates perfect practice anywhere, anytime. Whether you are playing a matching game, a race, or you come up with a totally unique option on your own, games motivate kids to learn and practice. Make learning a game: everyone loves a game! Turn learning into a game by searching for sight word practice games online.Add visuals: having a reference point such as a word wall with pictures associated with the words gives a visual connection to each word.If using photocopies, you can have children highlight the words you are working on to keep them at the forefront of their minds. Read: grabbing a grade-level book or printout and reading will reinforce the words and put them into context.These types of activities also help young children with fine motor skills. Hands-on activities: any activity where kids can touch, move, manipulate, order, cut, or glue is guaranteed to be a hit.Let kids write words in shaving cream, sand, with playdough, paint, or anything that helps them move. Even though it means you’ll have to clean up, adding tactile ways to learn will help kids master the words faster since you engage their mind, body, and creative sides. Don’t be afraid to get messy: kids learn by moving and playing, and yes, getting messy.are great sentence starters that kids can use to practice the same common words again and again with some variations. Use repetitive texts: find books or sheets that repeat the same beginning part of the sentence.Start with a few words at a time and then, as you add more words, incorporate the previously learned ones into new lesson plans. Start small: don’t try to teach the entire set at once.
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