Sight Words for Emerging or Struggling Readers

I work with several for whom reading has not come easily.  These are the kids who spend twenty out of twenty five minutes of silent reading time "looking" for a book to read.  Or when I sit and tell them it's time to read, they come up with lots of diversionary tactics.  Sometimes they ask me if I want some water or a snack (all my kids know I love cookies and treats).  Or they'll take a really long "picture walk" of the book we are about to read, or tell me about how they will celebrate their birthday which is coming up... in like six months. I don't blame them for trying to get out of reading.  For them, it is a frustrating, challenging, laborious task.  These poor kids find themselves stumbling over every other word, and the flow and enjoyment of reading gets lost as they focus all their energy on "sounding out" every word.  


For emerging readers or struggling readers, reading every day is absolutely essential.  Having a large sight word vocabulary is another critical piece.  Sight words are words that we store in our long term memory and can be recognized immediately "on sight." These can be high frequency words (a, and, the) common words that have irregular spellings ( friend), or just words that are frequently used in a child's vocabulary.   The more sight words a reader has, the more fluent her reading will be,  and the more energy and brain power she can devote towards comprehending and enjoying a story or book.  Sight words can also help kids make generalizations about common spelling patterns in English.


There are two lists that you can use for developing sight words.  Fry's Instant Sight Words has words grouped in lists of 100 and list words in order of their frequency of use in written text.  There's also Dolch's Sight Word list that groups words by levels and all together, these words make up 50-75% of written text.  Many of the words appear on both lists.  
Here's a link to see them both: http://www.uen.org/k-2educator/word_lists.shtml

To help commit these words to memory, kids need lots of repetition and exposure.  I will take one list at a time and put words on index cards (no more than 5 new words introduced at a time).  We read each new word, write it in the air, and talk about it.  I will come up with a sentence that uses the word and ask the student to do the same.  Once you have a lot of words, you can play games with them:


Bingo: Make a 4x4 or 5x5 game board.


Swat the Word: Spread the words out on a table. The child "swats" the words as you call them out.  I write words in different colors and will sometimes have them "swat and say all the red words, blue words," etc.


Go Fish: Make pairs of each word and play as you would with a regular deck of cards.


Guess My Word: Put out several words and give clues that slowly narrow down to one word.  After each clue is given, have the students read the eliminated word and say why it doesn't match.
Sample Clues: 

• I'm thinking of a word that has three letters.
• My word starts with a /t/.
• My word has an /a/ in the middle.
• My word rhymes with man.

I like working with sight words because they give me (the tutor), the parents, and the child some real quantifiable measures of progress.  I show my students what list they are working on.  We even make piles of words they know and words they're still practicing.  They can see one pile grow and the other shrink.  We celebrate moving on from one list to the next.  I have one student who is now just about to complete his 10th list of Fry sight words, which means when we are done, he will have mastered the 1,000 most frequently used words in written text.  It's quite evident in his reading, and I can't wait to celebrate when he meets this goal!

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