I LOVE teaching sight words

As a mom and a teacher I know sight words are often difficult to teach, flash cards often don't work for most children. Educators know children need to see things many times to be able to remember it and need go see it even more to use it. Early childhood educators know play is a wonderful way to learn therefore my sight word routine

I started to rework my boring sight word routine when I read Mr. Greg from Kindergarten Smorgasbord's Sight Word 60 routine. The highlight is getting the children 60 exposures to the word each week. In a school day already packed, I was determined to find 15 mins a day for sight word practice. Therefore, 9am sight word time was born.

Monday: I introduce 2-3 new words. I typically choose one or two words the children are seeing often. In the beginning of the year, it's words typically seen in emergent readers. My second word is often a decodable one such as "can," "got," and "had."

I use the app BIG to display the word. We read the word, each child reads the word, we use our loud voices, soft voices, high voices, fast voices. Then we repeat sentences using the word. Finally children generate sentences using the wor.

Next, we use white boards or tiles to practice writing/making these words. Children also review tricky former sight words.

Tuesday: Typlically, we play a sight word game. My students love any excuse to slap a sight word, or  challenge each other on their sight word knowledge. This teacher loves games that get the kids moving and allows a variety of children to be winners. Our current favorites are Feed the Dragons part of my Dragons Love Tacos Unit and Valentine's Slap It. We also enjoy many variations of Kaboom and Around the World.

Wednesday: Typically I choose whiteboards, as I like to include sentence writing on Wednesdays, but if I choose tiles, I use a shared writing technique on my whiteboard after the children make the sight words. I start with this weeks sight words and then make/write old favorites (or rather ones we find difficult). I always have the sight words displayed in the classroom, but I ask the children to try first then check their work.

Thursday: Sight word stations. I set up various games and activities we have done whole group. I give the children a choice about which station they would like to participate in. This gives me time to sit down with children I know are struggling with certain sight words. I can also assess during this time.

Friday: we play beat the teacher. It is probably every classes favorite sight word game. If you do t know the rules it goes like this: both teacher and each child writes the sight word in the middle of their whiteboard. When the teacher says go, everyone writes the word once in each of the 4 corners. First one done wins points for their team, by April I'll have to really compete with the kiddos to win.

Well that's our week of sight words! How do you teach them?