Jump to content

Menu

Sight Words Yay or Nay


Stibalfamily
 Share

Recommended Posts

I have a 6 year old K'er. We are currently using All About Reading 1. Its a phonics based program that we like very much. I printed out Fry's sight words 1-100. He knows some of them, but others he can't seem to grasp. Whats the best way of learning sight words. Should I just keep going through AAR 1-4, ignoring sight word lists. It seems like it make him guess when he is reading, even words he can sound out. I know that AAR introduces sight words super slow. I think we are on lesson 23 and have; the, of and a so far. Anyone else want to weight in here. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Should I just keep going through AAR 1-4, ignoring sight word lists?

 

Yes, an emphatic yes. Once he is in the habit of decoding, phonogram by phonogram from left to right, you might consider a few if he asks. Trust AAR though. It will get you to a good place.

Edited by Syllieann
  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

With my 2 typically developing kids, I never did sight words, only phonics. My SN child can decode but she's so slow about it that we are working on memorizing high-frequency words by sight. I can't have her slowly and painfully sounding out words like "go", "do", "the", etc. every single flippin' time at 8 y.o.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

If he does seem to have a tendency towards word-guessing, I would be especially careful with sight words. AAR will cover all of those words and the skills needed to read them (most of them can be sounded out, and the word cards and other practice will help him move towards reading them automatically once he does know how to sound them out). As others have said, most sight-words are actually decodable. 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I would wait until phonics is established and then only do sight words if he has a fluency problem (a serious one that lasts, I mean--all new readers read slowly and haltingly at first).  Also, as the others said, most sight words are actually phonetically regular.

  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I teach only a bare minimum of words as "sight words": the, of, was, said, etc.  AAR lists 21 true sight words.

 

I don't however, stick dogmatically to only letting my kids read words that they can sound out.  As they read, if they come upon a word that they do not yet have the phonics to sound out, I will briefly introduce the phonics involved and help them sound it out.  So if they come to the word "high" I'll just say, "igh is a vowel team that says /i/, so /h/+/i/ says..."

 

I actively discourage guessing, and instead teach that (almost) all words can be sounded out.  If they come upon one that stumps them, the problem is not the sounding out process, but rather that they don't yet know all the sounds letters can make.

 

Wendy

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I agree with the others. We're using Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading and it introduces maybe a dozen or so sight words for a K-4th grade reading level. Most "sight" words are phonetically decodable once phonics are solidified. We don't do any sight words outside of the ones introduced in phonics.

 

Fluent reading Will come with practice. That's when they sound smoother and get out of that tedious sound out every word phase. It will come in time

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I teach only a bare minimum of words as "sight words": the, of, was, said, etc. AAR lists 21 true sight words.

 

I don't however, stick dogmatically to only letting my kids read words that they can sound out. As they read, if they come upon a word that they do not yet have the phonics to sound out, I will briefly introduce the phonics involved and help them sound it out. So if they come to the word "high" I'll just say, "igh is a vowel team that says /i/, so /h/+/i/ says..."

 

I actively discourage guessing, and instead teach that (almost) all words can be sounded out. If they come upon one that stumps them, the problem is not the sounding out process, but rather that they don't yet know all the sounds letters can make.

 

Wendy

This is also what we do. I tell her how to phonetically sound out words she doesn't know.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I vote nay hundreds of times, one for each of my remedial students with guessing problems from sight word teaching. Here is why and how to teach all but 5 of the 220 Dolch words and 100 Fry instant words with phonics:

 

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

 

Any good phonics program eventually get to them, but if your child really wants to be able to read non decodable readers early, teach them ahead of your phonics program's schedule with phonics. Otherwise, waiting is safest.

Edited by ElizabethB
  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Most "sight words" can be decoded once you understand basic phonics principles. Once you've been reading a long time, then they all become sight words.

Actually, brain research has shown that they all just become super fast decoded words!! Stanislas Dehaene's research showed that we are processing all the letters and letter teams as sounds, just super fast in parallel. He states that the fastness and automaticity of it just creates the appearance of reading them as wholes. I will look for the quotes or a thread about it and add, they are on several of my pages, and there is a thread about it here somewhere.

 

Here is a good quote:

 

Recent brain research by Stanislas Dehaene found that the brains of good readers were processing individual letters and bigrams such as "ch" or "oa" at the same time in a parallel architecture. He states that the "massively parallel architecture explains the speed and robustness of visual word recognition. Most importantly, for educators and teachers, it creates an illusion of whole-word reading." From page 23 from this article of his:

 

http://www.unicog.org/publications/Dehaene%20Review%20Cognitive%20neuroscience%20of%20Reading%20and%20Education%202011.pdf

 

And, here is the thread:

 

http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/579026-brain-research-shows-adults-read-words-by-sound-not-sight-just-really-fast/?hl=%2Bstanislas+%2Bdehaene

Edited by ElizabethB
  • Like 7
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

The purpose of sight words is to encourage fluency. So I too would encourage you to wait until he feels more confident reading before you dig too deep into sight words. If you do choose to do more down the road, we've used the mastery approach of having 7 envelopes numbered 1-6, and then one with DONE on it. As he correctly reads the word the first time and fluently, we move it up a number until it reaches DONE. My son loves this approach for the competitive aspect and that he visually gets to see his progress!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have a 6 year old K'er. We are currently using All About Reading 1. Its a phonics based program that we like very much. I printed out Fry's sight words 1-100. He knows some of them, but others he can't seem to grasp. Whats the best way of learning sight words. Should I just keep going through AAR 1-4, ignoring sight word lists. It seems like it make him guess when he is reading, even words he can sound out. I know that AAR introduces sight words super slow. I think we are on lesson 23 and have; the, of and a so far. Anyone else want to weight in here. 

 

No sight words. Any good phonics method will teach the phonics needed to read most of the words on sight-reading lists.

 

It is why I prefer Spalding. No sight words. No need to teach sight words.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

This video on All About Learning Press explains well why they teach in the order they do and don't teach the Dolche sight words first....

http://www.allaboutlearningpress.com/dolch-sight-words/

 

I was wondering about rule-breakers, and so the list below the video of the rule breakers were helpful (I don't use All About Reading, but I use All About Spelling, and I messaged them about this and found out that the ONLY rule-breaker from the Dolch list not covered in All About Spelling was laugh ...so, just in case you ever need that info, you have it.  :-)

 

For me, I notice that if I have my child re-reads the same books over and over (not a problem with ones he likes), after helping him a few times with a word past his level, as he memorizes the book, he will often pick up the word by sight naturally, and recognize it by sight in other books.   And he's not a strong reader otherwise...doesn't tend to pick up things easily, so I would say from my experience that even for a struggling reader sight words can be picked up just through reading practice.   

Edited by goldenecho
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

 Share

×
×
  • Create New...