Kindergarten: 5 Simple Ways to Teach Sight Words
High frequency sight words (also known simply as sight words) are commonly used words those young children are encouraged to memorize as a whole by sight, so that they can automatically recognize these words in print without having to use any strategies to decode.
All | Do | Must | That |
Are | Get | Our | There |
But | Have | Please | Was |
Did | Into | She | Who |
- Expose your child to sight words early on.
Encourage regular reading for will boost their language development and reading skills. Moreover, doing so multiple times a day familiarize them with a wide variety of sight words.
- Make read-aloud more interactive.
Sight words make up a large percentage of all text. Thus, engaging in interactive read-aloud and emphasizing repetition is a great way to practice them.
- Engage all of their senses.
Encourage multi-sensory activities such as fill in missing letters or rearrange letters to correctly spell a sight word. Also, have your child write the word in the air and then have them write it on the palm of their hand. For some learn better by doing it with their bodies but make sure that they say each letter and the word it spells.
- Sort sight words into categories.
It can be helpful to show kids how to sort sight words into categories, such as “rule followers” and “rule breakers.” However, this should be used with more fluent readers who have already built early decoding skills.
- Read and play with sight words daily.
Regular reading naturally reinforces the learning of sight words. Make it fun with various interactive activities such as sight word games, art projects, and much more.
Source: Scholastic