Today I am doing something new for the Kindergarten Smorgasboard!
It's our first ever week long blog series! Starting today and each day this week, I'm going to do a blog post showing how we do sight words in our classroom! Each post will show you exactly what we do on that day. It's like a real time glimpse into the chaos of our classroom!
So, you see, what had happened was, I stunk at teaching sight words. We did all kinds of random things and we never had a direction and plan for teaching sight words. And by we, I mean me. The kids were just along for the ride! My students always did ok and learned some words but they didn't retain the words well and I just knew there was a better way. I knew I was failing my students and wanted to fix it.
And thus was born Sight Word 60. Our literacy coaches came to us with this idea so I took it and modified it and tweaked it and made it my own.
The premise of Sight Word 60 is that in the course of a school week, 5 days, students get over 60 exposures to each sight word. Brain research says we need 21 exposures to learn something and move it into long term storage. So, why not triple that and get 60 or more exposures?!
Sight Word 60 works with any sight word list. Dolch. Fry. And if your district is like mine, we have our own list that changes frequently (and by frequently it depends on who you ask because when you ask different people you get a different list...but that's beside the point...). My district requires our kindergarten students master 100 words.
We are on a 4 week schedule. 3 weeks of new words (4 words each week). Week 4 is review of the 12 words (and all of the words we've learned).
It's a quick routine that take just a few minutes each day.
Day 1 is introducing the words.
We read the words.
We spell the words.
If possible, we say the sounds in the word and blend the word.
Mr. Greg uses the word in a sentence and the students repeat.
We do that routine for each word. So Monday is 4 words and we go through that process for each of the 4 words on Monday.
That's it. Simple. Quick. Effective.
When showing my 'staches the sight words each day, I use a free app called BIG WORDS!
So here is what Monday or Day 1 or Sight Word 60 looks and sounds like!
Sight Word Freebies:
Here are some Sight Word Creations:
