#TEACHING SIGHT WORDS TO KINDERGARTEN HOW TO#

Orthographic mapping is far more efficient and effective than simply memorising words. You may often hear these words now referred to as ‘tricky words’ or ‘heart words’ because they have an irregular part that we need to know by heart. Therefore, in order for tricky words to truly stick, we have to help children connect the sounds to the symbols that represent those sounds.įor this reason, educators are shifting their approach to teaching high-frequency words with irregular spellings. This is where a sight word can be immediately retrieved from the brain- automatic word recognition. Orthographic mapping allows students to take an unfamiliar word and turn it into a ‘sight word’. This is where the brain maps (connects) the sounds (phonemes) to the letters (graphemes) in a word. Research has in fact demonstrated that children learn to read through a process called orthographic mapping. The same concept applies to reading – there is simply not enough room in our brains to store all of the words that we need to be successful readers!Ī new model for teaching high frequency words Think about when we need to clear storage from our phones – the first things that we clear are photos and videos, as these take up the most room. In order to remember enough words to be successful readers, we would need to store between 30-70 000 words (pictures) in our brains. Many students struggle to remember these tricky high frequency words, even after repeated exposure to the words. Without a strong focus on phonics skills, many students will struggle to develop strong reading skills and become fluent readers and accurate spellers, even if they engage in regular sight word practice and high-frequency word games. The problem with this model of sight word instruction: whilst rote memorisation has worked for some young readers when teaching sight words, it doesn’t work for all. You may have heard of Dolch words or the Fry sight word list as common lists for kindergarten sight words, as for many decades, these were commonly considered as the best way to teach sight words to kindergarten students and other little learners. The goal was for students to read these ‘sight words’ automatically, and they were traditionally taught to do this through rote memorisation. The belief was, if students saw a new word enough times, they would learn it. High-frequency words have often been referred to as ‘sight’ words, and previously these words were taught by encouraging children to simply learn them by sight.

#TEACHING SIGHT WORDS TO KINDERGARTEN HOW TO#

Tracing around words, drawing pictures of items and labelling them, doing worksheets where you circle the matching sounds, etc., are all valuable activities.How Heart Words are challenging traditional ideas about how to teach Kindergarten sight words. – Play hide and seek and hunt out the sound the teacher calls. Then, find the odd one out from a pile of sounds. – Have fun with Snap, finding matching pairs of sounds.

– Play sorting games, posting all one sound through the slot of a tissue box. Start to mix up the order as the pupils become familiar with the sounds. – Go through the words in the same order.

Spend several lessons on the same five or six sounds or words. – Repeat, revise, play more games, and gradually feed in new sounds. – Make up an action for each sound – it might be to form the letter with your body or mime a word that goes with that sound. – Make up and sing a tune with the sight words in it and add some actions. – Play musical flashcards with the sounds. Then, ask kids to guess which sound you will show next. – Show a couple of sounds and have kids say them. For example, teach the sound ‘a’ as in cat, not the letter’s name ‘a’ as in ape. Use different colours and props, like a fly swatter, to hit the card you say.

– Use big letter flashcards in lower case.

Teaching sight words to kindergarten