My little Maddy’s got the reading bug. She’s trying to read anything and everything she can, whether its the writing on our snack boxes, road signs, recipes, or her own books. I’m having a blast watching her slowly acquire the skills she needs to unlock the words around her, so I decided a few weeks ago to introduce her to some high frequency words.
A gazillion activities disguised as games exist to use with Sight Words. As I use them, I’ll share them.
- Point to the Word: I chose half of the readinga-z first set of high frequency word flash cards (24 total), then I took only 12 of those words. I told Maddy that we were going to practice reading ‘Kindergarten’ words, and I read through the words first, slowly, putting them face up in front of Maddy as I went.
Then I put three words in a row. I told Maddy to grab Puppy (her favorite lovey of the day) and said,
Maddy, would you please put Puppy on either the word ‘to’ or ‘am’?
She put him on ‘to’, so I gave her a good Woooo-hoooo!! and we tried again. Awesome reading! Can you put Puppy on the word ____ or _____?
We went through the words two or three times, I gave her tons of praise for trying her best. I didn’t want to overwhelm her or bore her, so we soon moved on to bigger and better things–playing veterinarian with Puppy and his pals as our patients.
An extension for this easy activity would be to find an emerging reader book that had several of the words we practiced in it and to read it together, but if you’re not ready for that, then try:
- place four cards face up, two on top and two below, and do the same activity as above;
- do either of the above activities and have the reader use a “magic wand” or some other fun pointer to point to the words;
- do the above activities and have the reader write the word(s) you ask her to (on a white board, on fun paper, with markers, in watercolors, etc);
- play ‘flip-it’ where you flip a card over and you and the reader “race” to read it first (an activity for a stronger emerging reader).
Here are some pretty cool places to pick up Dolche sight words or cards: Mrs. Perkins’ Dolche Words, Dolch Kit, a beautiful set by Jan Brett, abc teach, and lanternfish which has awesome cards to print from your computer.
FYI: I belong to reading a-z, which I find incredibly rich with resources for tutoring, teaching, and using for my own kiddos. It’s literally an on-line book room packed with leveled printable books, lesson plans, activities, easy assessments, and tons of letter and sound activities.
Whew! That’s a ton of learning for today, even though Maddy didn’t realize it. Now let the reading fun really begin!!
