Sight words are essential in helping your child learn to read.
What are Sight Words?
Sight words are common words found in text. Some of these words cannot be easily sounded out, so beginning readers need to recognize these words by ‘sight.’ During your child’s Kindergarten year, he or she will probably learn anywhere between 20 to 100 words.
Sight Word Lists
Each district will vary in the sight word list used. The most common sight word lists are the Dolch Sight Word List or the Fry Sight Word List. In my district, we use the Dolch Sight Word list, focusing on the Pre-Primer and Primer lists, for a grand total of 92 sights words that students need to learn by June. Students that use the Fry Sight Word List will learn 100 words in Kindergarten.
How Can I Help My Child Learn Sight Words?
It is essential that your child studies sight words nightly. From my own personal experience with my class, students that did not study their sight words nightly, struggled to learn new sight words each week and therefore struggled in reading. Studying sight words with your child 10 minutes a night will help improve the speed in which they read the sight words and help in identifying the sight words in text. Here are some simple, but effective strategies to help your child learn sight words.
- Flash cards
- Memory – create two sets of sight word cards and play memory – child has to be able to read the word in order to claim the match
- Go Fish – create two sets of sight word cards and take turns asking if the other person has the sight word in their hands
- Practice writing sight words on a whiteboard
- Read books with sight words
- Sight word hunt – write sight words on post-it notes and place around the house, encouraging child to read the words
- Sidewalk Chalk – have child practice writing the sight words or write the sight word and have child read it
- Stamps – have child stamp out and then read sight word
- Post-it Notes – write sight words on post-it notes and place the notes around the house. Have your child read the words as they move about the house.