Goodbye Sight Words
Hello High Frequency Words
We need to start thinking about sight words differently—what they are, how kids learn to read them, and how we teach them. In this video, I talk about how I’ve been teaching sight words in my kindergarten classroom for the past six years and the changes I am going to make based on what the Science of Reading tells us.
First, I talk about how we should be thinking about sight words and the implications for teaching. At 12:55 in the video, I explain how I’ve been teaching sight words in my classroom. Though it’s been effective—the majority of students learn to rapidly decode and spell dozens of sight words—I will no longer be doing it the way I have been.
The video is a bit long (28:47). Perhaps you’ll only want to listen to the beginning. If you’re interested in why I must discontinue something that has seemingly been successful, you can continue to listen to the rest.
As an introduction and a summary, the following images show what the research says about sight words, how students learn them, and the changes we should make in our thinking and teaching.
And, with that, I say goodbye to sight words—I have to train myself to never think of them or call them that again—and hello to high frequency words!
Credit for much of my thinking in this article and video goes to:
https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fpadlet.com%2Fpkastner%2Fm6gswf37vp9h1dfq%3Ffbclid%3DIwAR32RgrNUgGlwFnuyzGVtS_chBRO0pMdL4XCUBMgA3CB78v4NSLgNgdjEww&h=AT1JqUgDxRkh1Gt659h4WGi5zbz6EZBjBxi7Lt_Z7QSzlDzyW_odQFietKccBn1pcG16PwX3zg57OXJtM1t1Yn9Zv3z55r1c21jP6yYKBQB59a5Yokb0Z3qfTiXV
https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.readingrockets.org%2Farticle%2Fnew-model-teaching-high-frequency-words%3Ffbclid%3DIwAR3kZZjJCNCQF0GAg3QdIQvcPsgAOk3fww1qRPUv0-aiCve09Ribot_lY1A&h=AT3z46OIm7_webVJTZ8gUq8LnVW4WySKFPPFar4SWp2KlTDYZrHWGVXO0NFO458Fq3iLL7mQ1gs6b5cn70BzNvAuXaB-MqfnsFnhRiQ2-DKv9xYjQHSxjdwdGh2B