![]() ![]() A child who has learned the sound-letter correspondences for the alphabet and several two-letter phonograms can read hundreds of words! There is no need to memorize words that can be decoded!Ī child who has memorized 100 words can only “read” 100 words. However, once a child learns specific phonograms including or, oo, ow, ee, ue, ay, a_e, th, ou, i_e, a_e, ea, ew, er, wh, ir, then even more sight words from the Dolch and Fry word lists can also be easily decoded using phonics knowledge ( i.e., for, look, down, see, blue, away, make, play, three, that, with, out, like, this, now, came, ride, good, brown, eat, new, soon, our, ate, say, under, or, when, time, number, way, than, been, first, made, white). Some words are tricky because they include double letter sounds that a child may not have learned yet. If you look at the pre-primary and primary Dolch words and the first 100 Fry words for Kindergarten, you’ll see that many of these words can be easily sounded out and read by a child with a knowledge of the sound-letter associations for the alphabet letters ( i.e., and, a, in, it, on, at, had, but, not, can, him, am, its, did, get, up, big, red, jump, help, run, will, yes, went, well, ran, must). At first glance, you might think that many words on these sight words lists are not decodable. ![]() Two common sight words lists are the Fry sight word list and the Dolch sight word list. Why sight words don’t work.Īlthough there IS a time to invite your child to memorize a few high-frequency words to improve reading fluency, you can create problems if you encourage your preschooler to memorize lots of words too early in the journey to reading.įirst, it’s a waste of time and energy to focus on getting your preschooler or kindergartener to memorize words that can be easily decoded using knowledge of the phonetic code. It’s because these words have letter sequences that follow regular phonetic rules. See for yourself how quickly you can read words that you’ve never seen before such as “thab” or “porlain”. Although it seems as if skilled readers have memorized words because they recognize words automatically, that’s just because decoding happens so fast! High-frequency words that are tricky or cannot be decoded are taught as they are encountered.Īll words eventually become “sight words” for a skilled reader. Children practice reading skills by sounding out decodable text using existing knowledge of the phonetic code. Reading programs that put phonics first discourage guessing at words or relying on pictures for context. Specifically addressing the question of sight words vs phonics, Stanford Professor Bruce McCandliss found that beginning readers who focus on letter-sound relationships increase activity in the area of their brains best wired for reading compared with memorizing whole words. That means explicit instruction of the code between speech sounds and written symbols. They can ride.”Ĭurrent research from cognitive scientists and neuroscientists indicates that the best way to teach children to read is through phonics. This is why some beginning reader books feature predictable and repetitive sentences with lots of high-frequency words and pictures to provide context and help children guess the right word.Ī good example is the Dick and Jane series, or levelled reader books with text like “Feet are neat! They can jump. This “whole word” or “whole language” approach assumed that if children see words often enough, those words will be stored in the memory as visual images. It used to be thought that reading is a visual memory process. Memorizing sight words does NOT equal learning to read! The idea is that children who can recognize these common English words at a glance can then concentrate on understanding what they have read instead of having to stop and decode each word. Why teach sight words?Īdvocates of teaching sight words say that the most common words used in English should be memorized so they can be recognized on sight to improve reading fluency and comprehension. One of the biggest mistakes is getting young children to memorize lists of sight words before they understand that words are made up of speech sounds in a row. The term "sight words" is often used interchangeably with "high-frequency words". No doubt you’ve come across sight words lists when looking for alphabet activities Pinterest to help your preschooler get ready for reading.Ī sight word is any word that is recognized and read at a glance. My hope is that this article will help you avoid problems that can come from getting your preschooler to memorize lots of words too early in the journey to reading. ![]() 3-5 years old learning to read with phonics sight words ![]()
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