This morning on Facebook, I saw this picture, with the comment:
1st grade sight words are no joke!
Listen, everyone. This is a big deal.
We CANNOT go around telling 6 and 7 year olds to MEMORIZE BY SIGHT words like consequently and spectacular. For two reasons:
1. These words are not yet in these kids' vocabulary. If the whole point of reading is making meaning from text, how are they going to connect what they read to something in their experience? I'm all for teaching kids new vocabulary words, but this is not the way to do it.
2. Many of these kids are still working on sounding out CVC words (cat, hot, tub) and recognizing when the "magic E" pattern in words like kite or hate means the vowel is long. They are not equipped to be memorizing words like this, and what's going to happen is that they will start guessing at every word they see, which moves their reading progress backwards.
The only Sight Words children should be asked to learn are the High Frequency Words in our language that they're going to run into all the time - words like one, saw, or said.
If you want to learn more about Sight Words and High Frequency Words, please read my free eBook, All About High Frequency Words found at my Teachers Pay Teachers store.
Comments