Sight Words/High Frequency Words
Sight Words, sometimes called High Frequency Words, are the words that make up the majority of the written English Language. In fact, there is a list of 100 words that make up over half of all the writing that your child will encounter through 3rd grade.They are words like the, in, a, of, on, she, etc that many times cannot be sounded out and must be recognized "on sight" of the word. Wouldn't it be great for your child to learn as many of thses as possible so they will be able to read over half of what is expected automatically.
This year, we will be working on recognizing and reading many of 100 sight words. We will begin early in the year and continue until May. I generally start out with everyone having the same words. However, every child is different and learns at a different pace. This is why I will eventually have a short term "goal" set for each child. Once the goal is reached, your child will move on to a new set of sight words. Keep in mind that I do not consider a sight word mastered until is recognized instantly by a child. If the child has to sound out the word in order to remember what it says then he/she is not recognizing "on sight." The purpose of learning sight words is to help your child become a fluent reader. Fluent readers do not stumble or sound out every word and because of this they can comprehend more of what they are reading (which is the whole point of reading something). Please keep in mind that I do not expect Kindergarteners to read all words fluently (only sight words).
We learn sight words, and all words for that matter, by being exposed to them repeatedly. The average child really "knows" any given word after 28 exposures. Keeping in mind that all children are different and come to Kindergarten on different academic and social levels, this means that some children may "know" a word after seeing it only 1 or 2 times and others it may take 100 times to "know" a word. I expose the children to as many words as possible and do so in many ways. We call the words from flash cards, write the words, say the words, trace the words, spell them, play games with them, match them, read them in sentences, etc. I will be asking you to help at home by doing some of these same things. Remember, 28 times is the average number. We will have word lists that come home every week that are to be read, spelled, and written once each day. This generally only takes about 5 minutes and sight words will sometimes be included in this. When sight words are not included in these word lists, they are still to be practiced periodically.
The site below contains the 220 words that make up 50-75% of the English Language. They are listed in order from the most common to the least commom. Taking the top 100 will cover the words mentioned earlier. Remember, because every child learns differently, some children may not make it past the first 10 words in Kindergarten, while others may learn all of the first 100 on the list. Visit http://literacyconnections.com/Dolch1.html for a list of the 220 most commom words in the written English language.