Sight words
I have been struggling to know what to do with “sight words”. The term “sight words” can have more than one meaning.
1. The most common high frequency words. This includes
a. words that only use the most common sound of each letter,
b. those that use 2 and 3 letter sounds, e.g. with, her, out
c. Less common sounds, e.g. was, what, they, here …
d. and irregular words, e.g. said, people
2. Only 1b, 1c and/or 1d above.
I have included many common words from 1a at the end of each level of Gilead® Success with Phonics. (See 1-5, 2-6, 3-5 and 4-5 in http://successwithreading.com/videos-children/)
But what is best to do with 1b, 1c and 1d?
Many people teach these “sight words” just using methods like flash cards and games, relying largely on “taking a picture of it with your mind”. Some/many children find that they cannot remember all of the words that they need to learn, become overloaded and confused, and then resort to guessing. Often these words are taught first, or at least very early, in learning to read so that children don’t learn to sound out words well enough.
If you leave introducing these “sight words” words until after children have learned all the letter-sound correspondences in them, e.g. “ow” in now and “or” in for, these words are not a problem. But, they may need to know some of them earlier.
So, I have decided to introduce some of these words earlier in the sequence than I would normally have taught them, but still give children the background they need. This will give them a logical basis for reading and remembering the words, including the sounds of some letter combinations and some simple rules. Only teach these “sight words” ahead of the normal sequence if your child needs to learn them at school, etc.
I have added these “sight words” into the first set of Phonic Comic books to make a set of “easy plus” books – easy words that just use the most common sound of each letter, plus some of the most common “sight words” from 2 above. (Also “s” can say /z/, and “ed” saying /d/ or /t/.) Phonic Comic easy plus books will be part of the next update of the Gilead Success with Phonics program.
Children will be directed to read these “easy plus” books at appropriate places in the normal sequence.
These are the words I have included:
a, come, for, go, have, he, here, of, no, now, she, some, the, they, this, to, was, were, what, with plus I
I have also included you and are even though they are not in the “easy plus” books, because they are usually in the first 20 words in lists of the most common words in written English.
Print an extra set of the first set of Phonic Comic easy books. (You can find links to them all at http://successwithreading.com/videos-children/). Then print the pdf, easy plus books update (A4, auto rotate, but no zoom), plus corrected easy plus 1/11. Cut out the short sentences and glue them over the single words, in effect giving you a free set of the “easy plus” books as well. This pdf also includes more ideas for teaching each of the words.
Also, there is now a set of easy plus books for Phonic Comics 2.
Click on the bottom right hand corner of each video to see it full screen. If you have trouble seeing the videos try the combined video at sight words plus
All illustrations for Phonic Comic books © A. H. M. Wherrett, 2004.
Thanks to Pet Porpoise Pool, (Troy Saville, assistant manager), Coffs Harbour, NSW for permission to film the performing dolphins (brush) and to PopEyed for permission to film “bow”.
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