This year we will be teaching 50 sight words throughout the school year. Attached you will find the 50 words.
Sight words are words that that frequently occur in our reading and writing. The more automatic students become in recognizing these words, the more fluent they will be in their reading and writing.
As teachers we are always looking for ways to refine our practice so we can better serve our students. Recently, we have been following a body of research referred to as the “science of reading” to help us better understand how children learn to read.
In the past, we believed that if a student simply saw a word enough times they’d learn it. We taught our students their sight words through rote memorization. We used flashcards and asked for parents to drill the words with their child at home. However, more recently, we have learned that using a specific mental process of teaching and reviewing the sounds and then blending the sounds together helps to permanently store words for immediate retrieval. This process is called orthographic mapping. It is how we take an unfamiliar word and help to turn it into a sight word. In order for this mental process to take place, students need direct instruction on how to connect sounds to the written word, whereby helping increase the automaticity in which these words are read.
However, some words do not follow the rules and can not be sounded out. We teach the students that these letters are “rule breakers” and that we need to memorize them by heart (that is why some sounds may be marked with a heart). We call these words “heart words” because we need to memorize them and learn them by heart.
An example of a heart word is “my”. Students can usually identify the beginning and ending sounds (/m/ and /y/) but the ending sound they hear is the long /i/, therefore often spelling the word Mi. The “heart letter” or the tricky part in this word is “y” With the heart method, students receive explicit phonics instruction to learn that in the word my we spell the “i” sound with the letter “Y”.
If you would like to review and practice these sight words at home with your child please encourage your child to say the letter sounds and blend the sounds together to read the word. The same holds true for writing. If your child is looking to write a sight word, please have your child say each sound and then write the corresponding letter. If there is a “rule breaker” you can remind your child that it is a “heart word” when they are reading or writing.
Thank you for your support at home!
any
the
I
and
to
had
a
down
is
see
my
he
go
do
put
you
like
find
can
from
no
so
am
we
for
have
too
are
all
make
be
look
now
new
stop
of
come
off
one
said
play
has
was
she
two
who
they
what
will
why
where