Sight Words

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Reading Teachers Chatboard

Sight Words

by CthePower

Sep 27, 2012

What are your thoughts on teaching of sight words ? Do you see any long term effects on this type of program for teaching reading on future generations?

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Debbie On 9/27/12, CthePower wrote: > What are your thoughts on teaching of sight words ? Do you > see any long term effects on this type of program for > teaching reading on future generations? Sight words are words that students can read without sounding them out & those that don't follow the standard rules of English. These words appear in...See More

Oct 3, 2012

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Nicole/MO SIGHT WORD PHONETICS The problem with sight words is that they are too often taught as whole words. They are taught one word at a time without teaching the sounds in the word. THIS DOES NOT WORK. It is just plain awful how many new reading programs drill an alarming amount of sight words. Of the 220 most commonly taught words (called Dolch words), ...See MoreSIGHT WORD PHONETICS The problem with sight words is that they are too often taught as whole words. They are taught one word at a time without teaching the sounds in the word. THIS DOES NOT WORK. It is just plain awful how many new reading programs drill an alarming amount of sight words. Of the 220 most commonly taught words (called Dolch words), 150 are completely phonetic and can be easily learned by "Saying the sounds and reading the word." Yes, I mean SOUNDING OUT. Why, oh why, are teachers abandoning basic synthetic phonics teaching?

The other 70 Dolch words that aren't completely phonetic, 68 conform to simple patterns of exceptions and can be taught PHONETICALLY. Sight words should not be taught at all in a pure phonics program, but should be merely taught phonetically along with other words. Reading programs like Reading Mastery teach sight words this way with great success. I have used it for ten years and have seen students make remarkable progress without the nonsense drilling of sight words. Students with dyslexia or problems with short-term (working) memory should NOT be given a large number of sight words to memorize. It is so frustrating for them and slows down their reading progrss. Plus, it is a waste of instructional time when teachers focus too much time on it.

When memorizing words as a whole, the eye jumps all around the word. Too many words taught as wholes by sight encourages the development of dyslexia. Sounding out all words from left to right encourages proper left to right eye movement while reading. Moreover, pictures and words are processed on different sides of the brain. Thus, not only do sight words encourage incorrect eye movements, they also confuse the brain.

My students begin our program with a past development of guessing habits from too many sight words. When students have been drilled to read words as wholes, they tend to NOT slow down while reading to examine the spellings of words (letter cues). You hear errors such as was for saw, started for stared, on for no, yes for eyes, and even for over. You can understand how the eye is jumping around the word in those such errors instead of looking through the word left to right.

I have a great post on the UK Reading Reform forum ([link removed]:

PART 1: Sight Word Drilling--yay or nay [link removed]

Part 2: Sight Word Drilling—yay or nay? [link removed]

If you aren't signed up as a member on the UK RRF website, I would recommend that you do so. I have learned more on that site about how to become an effective reading teacher that I did in my graduate and undergraduate teaching classes. UK students (especially Finland, Swedan) are making much higher reading gains as compared to US students. In my opinion, it is because US schools are still utilizing methods such as sight word drilling/whole word methods.

This post was written quickly and probably contains spelling/grammatical errors. I apologize for this matter.

Nicole/MO

Oct 5, 2012

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