Sight Words & Nonsense Words...2 of our favorite things!

Sight words do not follow commonly taught phonics rules and cannot be sounded out.  The only way a child can read these words is to recognize them by sight.  Knowing the sight words by heart will also make a faster and fluent reader. 

If children have to sound out every word, reading becomes so hard and slow that children might want to give up, or if not, they will have a difficult time comprehending what they are reading.  Learning high frequency words by sight helps children build confidence and fluency in their reading, and thus, reading becomes easier and makes more sense.

All I have to say is that learning to read is a lot of work...especially at the age of kindergarteners!  Here are some things I enjoy doing in my classroom to drill these sight words into their growing brains.



On the way out the door to recess or specials the students will say the sight word on my hand and then give me a high five for getting it right (with or without help)! 



My intention was to have the hand  a little bit bigger...but the kiddos still love it!  I will be posting the hand print freebie in the next couple of days!

The special student of the day gets to wear this extra special hat.  The student will choose the sight word he/she wants to wear for the day.  At some point in the day the students will have to say the sight word on the hat to the special student or....the student will come looking for your to say the word to him/her!

My favorite...and the students, too!  I call it the M&M Game.  It is just like "Hangman"...but I choose not to use those words with the kiddos.  I use this game to introduce new sight words or play it then we have a few extra minutes.  You could probably come up with something cuter than my drawing.  This is what I drew the first time and it has stuck with me.  You woud be surprised how many times the students figure out the word before I draw the letter M in the middle. 

Each day the students enter the classroom he/she has to whisper the "Secret Password" in my ear.  I start this the first day of school.  The students get into a nice routine of not entering the classroom if I am busy with another teacher, student, or parent. 

I have also added a couple of pictures of my students from one of our sight word powerpoints.  I take a picture of each student (and me) holding a sight word card and build a power point to share with the kiddos.  Sometimes we will see how fast we can go through all the words and sometimes we will stop at the color words and sing the color song (by Frog Street Press...love it!) and if we know the little song~chant~ditty~dance from Heidi Songs (LOVE HER, TOO!) we will perform it all together. 

I just posted our Robotic Nonsense Unit on Teachers Notebook.  Check it out!  My kiddos had so much fun with this unit and LEARNED A LOT, TOO!

Click {here} to see our Nonsense Unit!