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RachelFlores
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So, I know that sight words are bad, dd is already predisposed to dislexia genetically and with some slight indicators (a lot of letter reverals) which might be just her age and might not. We have been going through phonics readers and the only sight word I've included is "the". It is "the word you don't sound out" when she comes to it and starts trying to sound it out. Is there a rule for it? In the readers our current book is introducing number words. I do not know the phonics rules for one or two. Are there any? The phoics readers we are using are 98% decodable with basic phonics instruction, but even Bob books use THE and number words. Are a few sight words ok?

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So, I know that sight words are bad, dd is already predisposed to dislexia genetically and with some slight indicators (a lot of letter reverals) which might be just her age and might not. We have been going through phonics readers and the only sight word I've included is "the". It is "the word you don't sound out" when she comes to it and starts trying to sound it out. Is there a rule for it? In the readers our current book is introducing number words. I do not know the phonics rules for one or two. Are there any? The phoics readers we are using are 98% decodable with basic phonics instruction, but even Bob books use THE and number words. Are a few sight words ok?

"The" is not a sight word.

 

The phonogram "th" has two sounds: /th/ as in "thing," and /TH/ as in "this." Do you hear the difference? The first is "soft" and the second is "hard."

 

"The" uses /TH/.

 

Spalding and its look-alikes teach dc that a, e, o and u often say their second (or "long") sounds at the end of a short word or syllable. It's Spalding's Rule 4.

 

So "the" follows phonics and spelling rules. "The." You teach your dd to pronounce it with the long e when she's reading, and point out that often in speech we sort of slur that e so that is says something like "uh." She'll understand it.

 

Truly, there are very vew words which don't fit any phonics or spelling rules at all; even the ones which are exceptions are *mostly* phonetic, such as "people." We don't pronounce the o, but all the other letters can be sounded out phonetically, yes? Well, there you go. :-)

 

IMHO, Spalding works really well with dc who have dyslexic tendancies. I would look into that before diving into phonetic readers.

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Sight words aren't bad. It is useful for many.

 

I had a friend who had a child with eye tracking issues (have you had her eyes checked for eye tracking issues, reversals and other reading issues may be eye issues). Anyway the dr they went to said that reading isn't all about phonics and that teaching children sight words is not bad.

 

I do realize some disagree so on that we will have to agree to disagree.

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Sight words aren't bad. It is useful for many.

 

I had a friend who had a child with eye tracking issues (have you had her eyes checked for eye tracking issues, reversals and other reading issues may be eye issues). Anyway the dr they went to said that reading isn't all about phonics and that teaching children sight words is not bad.

 

I do realize some disagree so on that we will have to agree to disagree.

 

He's not a reading specialist just because he deals with eye issues and eyes are needed for reading. That's about the equivalent of getting advice on teaching driver's ed from a doctor who fixed your broken foot. After all, feet are needed for driving. ;)

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You can purchase Spell to Write and Read. It's great for learning the English language.

Although many words like 'the' are not sight words the rest of the non Spalding world calls them sight words.

I use a combination of 'sight' words & OG method. I'm using Saxon Phonics which does have sight words but some 'sight' words can be sounded out, like 'and' or 'into'.

I don't think sight words are bad as long as one uses caution. Just like anything else. moderation. That's my .02.

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He's not a reading specialist just because he deals with eye issues and eyes are needed for reading.

hmm did you go to that dr? Do you know him? Do you know what he has studied?

 

No you don't. Now I didn't go to him, but I have talked to my friend extensively about him in the past and what he knows and does for children. He is not just an eye dr, but he is one that has worked on reading issues.

 

And as I said sight words are not of the devil but others may disagree so again on that point we will have to agree to disagree.

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"The" is not a sight word.

 

The phonogram "th" has two sounds: /th/ as in "thing," and /TH/ as in "this." Do you hear the difference? The first is "soft" and the second is "hard."

 

"The" uses /TH/.

 

 

 

I understand, but we say it , "thuh" never "thee" and so since it is an exception, I would say it is a sight word. Isn't that the definition of sight words? Words that are exceptions to spelling rules? Is there a reason to remind her that "in this word the e at the end says uh" instead of "this is the word we don't sound out" ?

 

Don't I want her to memorize some words to help with reading fluency? I mean, after you know phonics and internalize it you certainly don't sound out every word in your head as you are reading. Haven't you memorized some of those words you see most often?

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I have seen so many of my remedial students harmed by just the list of sight words they send home in K that I would not even risk them in moderation, especially for a child that was prone to having difficulties.

 

Here is how to sound out all but 5 of the most commonly taught Dolch sight words, it includes the rule for "the."

 

http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Reading/sightwords.html

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I understand, but we say it , "thuh" never "thee" and so since it is an exception, I would say it is a sight word.

 

Are you SURE you never say "thee"? Most people do a mixture of the two, often doing the long 'e' sound before a vowel sound. For example "Go get the apple.", most people would use a long 'e'. Then "Go get the banana.", most people would say 'uh'.

 

Kids are pretty smart though. If you explain the "thee" pronunciation and that we often say "thuh" in our speech, she'll get it. You'd be surprised how easy it is to explain things like that sometimes. It is not an exception to a rule. It's a strange way of pronunciation on our parts. ;) In fact, I would be find with sounding it out in a reader and saying "thee", and as she gets better at reading, it will naturally become "thuh" in the proper places.

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ETC teaches "the" with he, me, she, we, etc. Because at the end of a "short word" (as they put it), "e" says its name. That helped my kids.

 

I think a few sight words are probably inevitable for most kids and I personally don't think they hurt the vast majority of kids if you don't emphasize them. However, I know it can be different for kids with dyslexia. And besides, "the" is an easy one to teach the rule for, I think.

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My son's pre-K program has taught him sight words. At first I was excited that he was learning to read, but I can't even believe how disgusted I am now. It has been a lot of hard work to unteach reading with sight words. He wouldn't even try to sound out a word. He expected me to teach him what the word was so he could memorize it. Needless to say, I have done a lot of research on it now and am using phonics. I don't think it will necessarily kill your child to learn a couple of sight words. Maybe if there is a reader, you can help her sound out words that are more advanced so she can recognize them.

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I haven't heard this argument before. Why are sight words considered bad?

 

 

I am NOT an expert, as we are not getting very far very fast with reading in my house, but I'll share what is going on here.

 

The preschool that my kids are in (4 year old classroom) has labeled everything. Door Wall Books etc. It is considered wonderful to be able to "read your way around the room". Which basically means memorizing the words. And somehow that has translated to guessing.

 

As I try to teach my kids to sound things out (and eventually they will have to have this skill when they hit unfamiliar words, right?), they don't WANT to do the work of sounding it out. It's easier just to guess. For example,

 

wall -> will / walk / well / welt etc. - they see any of these and assume it's wall, b/c that's the one they know

 

I don't know if this is the reason sight words are considered a problem in general, but this is the issue sight words have caused here.

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SWR teaches "one" in conjunction with "lone" and "alone". It also teaches the child to spell the word first, then the word is drilled. The opposite of sight words.

 

And the doctor who looked at my sons eyes tried to tell me phonics was irrelevent. That I should start with a sketch of a horse and eventually teach him to sight read horse. So just because they have a fancy title doesn't make them an expert for your child.

 

I like Webster's method - give the kid plenty of confidence with bigger but phonetically correct words like "baker" (long a at the end of a syllable, the phonogram /er/) and save the tough little words for a bit.

 

JMHO

Amy, who is disenchanted with doctors in general

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hmm did you go to that dr? Do you know him? Do you know what he has studied?

 

No you don't. Now I didn't go to him, but I have talked to my friend extensively about him in the past and what he knows and does for children. He is not just an eye dr, but he is one that has worked on reading issues.

 

And as I said sight words are not of the devil but others may disagree so again on that point we will have to agree to disagree.

 

Then if he is a reading specialist, with training in the mental processes related to reading, vs. the visual processes, we need to know those qualifications. Appealing to his authority as an eye doctor doesn't make any sense, no matter how many children have seen an improvement in reading ability after receiving vision therapy from him. He has an opinion, and unless he's a specialist in the mental processes that accompany reading, his opinion isn't worth more than the opinion of anyone else who has spent a little time reading up on the topic. That was my only point. Sorry it offended you, but it's true.

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I think we are mistaking Sight words here. Teaching reading by memorizing sight words by how they look is one thing (bad). Teaching reading by decoding sight words (aka most frequent easy words) is good.

Sight words are just words you see the most in a book. Its good to know a list of them and practice by sounding out.

 

The is also can be sounded out - /th/+/e/ Just teach TH sound. DS learned it very fast and had no trouble with th.

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The highly esteemed doctor (Ph.D) we were referred to to test my oldest for vision therapy was one who was a big whole-word fan. She pointed out that the testing showed my daughter had wonderful decoding ability, but probably had dyslexia because she was mildly deficient in knowing sight words. They would "remove" her phonics and "replace" it with "whole word" approaches. (More Info Here.) Why would I pay someone thousands of dollars to undo what I try so hard every day to teach? If we were ever to do vision therapy, we wouldn't go to this doctor.

 

My kids (so far) all have reversal tendencies when they read or write. We use SWR which has no "sight words." My second child understood the "the" /TH/ /E/ rule immediately with no issues except annoying her older sister who would try to correct her pronunciation with /TH/ /UH/. Since my children have these issues, I wouldn't teach sight words. There are a small minority of children who learn best using a whole word approach. (Someone has cited this number before, but I can't remember where it came from.) This is why many schools & programs teach a "balanced" approach.

 

My oldest daughter didn't do well with the "sight words" because I don't teach sight words and she hadn't gotten to all of them in her spelling curriculum yet. The tests don't take that into account.

 

I disliked Singapore Earlybird math because of its focus on trying to get the children to write number words so early. Several other math program teach number words early. I don't see the need.

 

"two" is like "twin" (how many people make up twins?)

"one" follows spelling rules for "lone" (how many people are there when you are alone?)

We "think to spell" them and then over time we learn to read them. When they are solidified, we will know them almost immediately by sight -- but only after we've learned the whys and hows of spelling.

 

We talked about lots of these type of words when we were studying history with respect to the islands of Britain. With that, my kids understood why so much of the Angle/Saxon language had bits of Latin, French, and other languages added to it and how those other languages changed how we pronounce other words over time.

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I haven't heard this argument before. Why are sight words considered bad?

 

wall -> will / walk / well / welt etc. - they see any of these and assume it's wall, b/c that's the one they know

 

Because of this with normal students.

 

With dyslexic students, they already find phonics difficult to grasp and use phonics. Guessing is easier. Generally if you don't introduce sight words they will continue to work on sounding it out till they they become fluent. If you introduce sight words they take it as permission to guess based on the shape of the word and the first few letters and once that habit begins, it often takes a year or more to break. Thus even as an adult I read Nicholas as Nickolatte for about 7 books. No it doesn't make sense, other than I read it as some foreign name I wasn't going to be able to figure out so why try. It is one of those Dyslexic things. Must have had coffee on the brain. My dh finally caught my mistake and we had a good laugh over it. It isn't so funny when your child is doing it with basic words.

 

Problem is you don't know if a child is truly dyslexic till they are around 3rd grade. If sight words were introduced at any point they are not confirmed guessers who need years of remediation to both break the habit and learn to read. All you have to do is teach these words phonetically and you give them a much better change of learning to read with out any remediation. Dyslexia is common enough I just don't see why it is worth using them at all.

 

For words where they are not quite phonetic you teach them to think phonetically for spelling, for example: says. The vowel says short e. I teach my girls to think long a when they spell, sAys. This also makes a connection to when they read it. They read sAys, then think, "Oh that is that weird word that we pronounce different than it is spelled." They then read it correctly. Same with A and The. I teach them phonetically with long a and e at the end. Then I explain that we are often lazy in our pronunciations, and because it is easier to say the /uh/ sound we end up saying /uh/ box and th/uh/ box. Then I allow them to read and use either one. Generally they start out using the phonetically correct one and then naturally end up using the other. Once in a while they will again struggle with it and I will quickly review all of the above.

 

Heather (dyslexic mom of dyslexic children)

Edited by siloam
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Kids are pretty smart though. If you explain the "thee" pronunciation and that we often say "thuh" in our speech, she'll get it. You'd be surprised how easy it is to explain things like that sometimes. It is not an exception to a rule. It's a strange way of pronunciation on our parts. ;) In fact, I would be find with sounding it out in a reader and saying "thee", and as she gets better at reading, it will naturally become "thuh" in the proper places.

 

I don't see the point of explaining the "the/thuh" stuff unless the child brings it up. I agree w/the last statement completely!

 

We use OPG so I taught my kids "the" as a sight word at first (just for the sake of reading early on) and then later, when we were learning what 'th' says and that vowels at the end of little words say their names, they would want to sound it out (even they already knew it as a sight word)...I was never asked about the "the/thuh" distinction (maybe it's b/c mine learned to read 'early'). Now that my oldest can read anything and everything - literally - I couldn't tell you what she says when she comes to that word (and she reads aloud to me daily) but my guess is, she does what boscopup said she would.

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I think we are mistaking Sight words here. Teaching reading by memorizing sight words by how they look is one thing (bad). Teaching reading by decoding sight words (aka most frequent easy words) is good.

Sight words are just words you see the most in a book. Its good to know a list of them and practice by sounding out.

 

The is also can be sounded out - /th/+/e/ Just teach TH sound. DS learned it very fast and had no trouble with th.

 

This makes complete sense to me and is where I was confused. I didn't realize some taught completely by sight without ever going through phonics.

 

For instance today I had DD read a part of Go Dog Go today. We haven't gotten to the rules about the words one or two (for example). Phonetically I'm not sure how to teach that yet and so I just told her the word. After that she had it memorized. Then of course I read this thread and wonder if I just messed her up for the rest of her life! OK, that might be a bit of an exageration! :tongue_smilie:

 

Everything was so much simplier when all we did was short vowels!

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I understand, but we say it , "thuh" never "thee" and so since it is an exception, I would say it is a sight word. Isn't that the definition of sight words? Words that are exceptions to spelling rules? Is there a reason to remind her that "in this word the e at the end says uh" instead of "this is the word we don't sound out" ?

 

You probably do say it both ways, you may just not notice it. Chances are good that you say "thee" egg, "thee" apple, or "thee" exam. When I was singing with a local choir, the director pointed out that, for the best elocution, we use a long e in "the" when the next word begins with a short vowel sound. It avoids the glottal stop that comes with saying "uh" (or some variant) twice in a row. So we have "thuh" snail, but "thee" escargot! ;)

 

Honestly, if you teach her to read the word as "thee," your daughter will generalize it once she gets used to seeing the word. Just like the rest of us, she will pronounce it in the context of the sentence, and she won't think about it any more than you or I do.

 

Good luck!

--Pamela

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