WORD WORK: Spelling, Phonics, Phonemic Awareness

Spelling, Phonics, and Phonemic Awareness: Sight Words

At our school, in Kindergarten, students are to learn 20 "star words" by the end of the school year.  Typically students are able to learn and retain knowledge (instant recall, spelling) of the majority of all 20 words and a few more by the time report cards are sent out in November.  In my classroom, students are challenged to learn additional sight words.  When they get to 1st grade, the sky's the limit as to how many they will learn.  They are tested on 50 sight words, but when I taught 1st grade a couple of years ago at my school, I challenged my students to learn the first 150 sight words on the Dolch sight word list.  Many went beyond the initial 150.  

Students learn sight words through various activities.  We look for sight words during Shared Reading, Morning Message, Guided Reading, etc.  We work with sight words during Literacy Corner (center) time.  Sight words can also be worked on during the "Word Wall Routine" and other games and activities (#1 by Cherry Carl) (#2 by Marie Rice) (#3 by Cherry Carl)!  I'd also highly recommend "The School Bell's Dolch List" site for independent student practice and progress tracking.

I plan on taking a picture of our word wall this year.  I don't have one right now -- sorry!  For our word wall words, I printed them on blank sentence strip type paper using a laser printer.  I then laminated the words.  I have well over 150 words that are laminated.  I only use a fraction of these for Kindergarten, but used them all for 1st grade.  Words are not placed on the Sight Word Wall until they are introduced.  Words are introduced for the first time during or after a shared reading selection that contains the word.  We then make a big deal of adding it to our Sight Word Wall.  Our words are attached to the wall using Velcro because the wall is carpeted (don't ask...!).  

I generally keep the words up all year.  Although recently, I've begun to take down our "no excuse" words.  "No Excuses" Words are those which students are expected to spell correctly in all of their everyday writing.