Thursday, March 22, 2012

Teaching Sight Words

So I was introduced to another blogger today April from Wolfelicious! She is having her first linky party and I am super excited to join in on the fun! The topic for this one is Sight Words - which I believe ANY teacher can use (even for upper grades=vocabulary)!

I decided to bullet how I teach my sight words or as we call them in my class POPCORN words!
  • Sight Word Chants- I don't know who created these chants, but I L.O.V.E love them! They are a great fun way to introduce them and it gives the kids something kinesthetic to do with it. Genius! The favorites in our room are marching them like soldiers and shooting them like a basketball! They love it when I call them "my little soldiers."
  • White Boards- Keeping it simple is sometime best. I just call out a sight word and have the kids write them on their white board. I feel like if they can spell it, they will know it. It also gives them the ability to use it in a sentence when they know how to spell it.
  • Popcorn Sentences- TW spreads popcorn word cards out like a card fan.  Each student chooses a popcorn word. They then have the tell me the popcorn word and use it in a sentence.
  • Around the World- This is a popcorn word game favorite in my class. The students are constantly asking if we can play it. Basically what happens is the first student stands up and goes to stand behind the next person. The teacher flashes the word and the two students compete to say the popcorn word first. The person who says it first moves to stand behind the next person. This works on automaticity of knowing their popcorn words. 
  • Roll The Word- Using a bread/meatloaf pan (dollar tree), a pre-made word mat, and a top or cotton ball students work on graphing the popcorn word.
 Okay so these are just a few of the ideas that I have and the methods that I use to teach sight words. If you have any questions about any of these please let me know and I will a)provide a picture b)create a freebie to help you understand (if applicable)!

Anyways, I'm starving and dinner only has 8 more minutes so I'm going to go fix up the mashed potatoes to go on the Shepards Pie! Yummy!

7 comments:

  1. Thanks so much for this! When do you start teaching sight words? And how do you introduce them for the first time? I have been told that I may be moving to kindergarten next year from 4th grade (I will find out in April/May and am SUPER excited) and I have no clue what to expect. If you have any pointers or suggestions, I would love to hear them! =)
    ~Jada
    jadawtolbert@gmail.com
    Daisy Days for Learning

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  2. The very first two sight words we teach are "I" and "am." This is because students should already be familiar with the word "I" since it is a letter (and you hope that most students come knowing their letters- but many don't). One of the ways we introduce these words is by having the class complete sentence starters. I would write "I am ____" the number of times I have a student. So if I have 20 students, I'm going to write "I am ____" 20 times. This gives the students an opportunity to introduce themselves by saying "I am Tangelia." After we finish writing each sentence, I would have the student read the sentence. This helps them to visually see the two words and hear the two words at the same time. Hopefully after repeating this 20 or so times the students become familiar with the two. You could also have the students draw a picture of themselves and write that sentence under the picture. I hope this suggestion helps for at least how to teach the first 2 popcorn words. For at least the first several weeks, I would repeat this with the new, weekly sight words.

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  3. Great post, i`m off to check out that linky party! I`m also a new follower! Stop by for a visit sometime!

    Kaleigh's Klassroom

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  4. I'm your newest follower!! I found you through the linky:) Thanks goodness for that!!! I hope you'll stop by my blog!
    www.123teachwithme.com

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  5. Your blog is really cute! I played around the world on Friday with shapes. Hilarious having them try to spit out those words faster than their friends. we got things like pexagon and rectagon blurted out and then all died laughing.
    anyway...I just wanted to say thank you so much for your feedback on my house post. It was really sweet.

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  6. Thanks for the comment! I bet that was fun! I've never tried it with anything but popcorn words. Thanks for introducing the idea of doing it with math facts as well!

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  7. Tangelia - I love your blog here! And hey I am ALL about word wall games :0) I play games like hot potato, beach ball word wall, mystery word, and Word Wall band..... I think you've inspired me to do my own blog post about my word wall games!

    Anyways, I wanted to let you know I am going to feature you and your blog next Sunday on my blog!


    ✿~jeannie~
    ­Kindergarten Lifestyle

    Kindergarten Lifestyle Facebook Fan Page

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