Sight Words... For the first 4 years of my teaching career, the thought of these gave me the biggest headache. My students had the hardest time mastering them. In general, they either learned them quickly or struggled all the way.
This is the first year I have felt successful with sight words and it is largely because of fantastic parent support at home! This is my first year in my current district and I have never encountered parents who are so eager to help their children at home. Let me tell you, it's amazing!
My routine for sight words this year is pretty simple & quick. First of all, I choose 5 focus sight words that are introduced whole group. For the most part, I select the words by looking through my collection of poems and finding a poem that includes five words we haven't covered yet. I like this because it helps my kiddos read the new words in context throughout the week. However, many of my students are way beyond the words that I may have selected for the week and this is where the Dolch Word lists come in so handy!
We have copies of the
Giraffe Dolch Word books made up at school, so teachers are able to grab them as needed. At the beginning of the year, I called students one by one and had them read down the list of words. Each time they missed a word, I circled it in their book. When they missed five words, those were their assigned words for the week. I love this system because it really lets students work at their own pace.
Our school has red take home folders, which I send home everyday. I don't know if my school made up the master recording sheets or if they are found on the School Bell website. But either way, we have a master list of all the words in the giraffe book. I slide this master sheet into the clear plastic back cover of the take home folder so parents can see which five words their child is working on that week. I star the words read correctly and circle the words missed. The word lists stay in the back of their folders all the time so they are available for me to mark when needed.
At the beginning of the year, it took a while to initially test all the kids on their sight words. But now that they have five assigned words per week, it's pretty quick to have them read their words and then assign the next five they miss. Finally, I quickly jot their five words on an index card, which the kids stick in their reading box for the week. I test students on sight words first thing in the morning while the class is getting settled and silently reading at their desks. All in all, it takes me about 15 minutes to test 4-5 kids each morning.
Each student is assigned a testing day for their words. This testing schedule matches the schedule for book shopping in my classroom. So students who shop for new books on a Monday, for example, also know they will be tested on their words on Monday morning. I've trained the kids to bring their red folders to the reading table on their assigned day, rather than turning them into the folder basket, so we're all ready to go.
I keep their word lists arranged by day, so it's easy to grab the ones I need.
Finally, many of the kids fly through the giraffe list, so my school also created a "Rocket Ship" list with more challenging words. So at this point in the year, some of my students are still working on the Giraffe List, some are on the Rocket Ship list, and a few students have finished all the words on both lists. Wow! For those students who need a challenge, we start over with the Giraffe list, but this time students have a spelling test on their assigned words, rather than just reading them.
So there you have it, a system for helping your kids master sight words that's working for me!
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