Teaching Sight Words as an Instructional Strategy

"For instructional purposes these are usually referred to as sight words or sight vocabulary because we would like our students to recognize them in less than a second. Why? Because this enhances their chance of getting to the end of a sentence in time to remember how it began." (May, 1989)

Sight words are words that good readers may instantly recognize without having to "figure them out." There are two reasons why sight words are an essential component of good reading: First of all, many of these words do not sound like their spellings might suggest, so "sounding them out" is unproductive. Also, a good reader really can't afford the time to dwell on too many words, or he may lose the speed and fluency necessary for determining the author's message.

By definition the most common words in our language, known as "high-frequency words" are also of the greatest utility to beginning readers. The 100 most common words actually make up about 50 percent of the material we read, and the 25 most common words make up about one-third of our written material (Fry, Kress, and Fountoukidis, 2000).

Students can greatly increase their reading efficiency when we teach them to read half or more of the words they encounter in a quick and automatic manner.

Amazing, isn't it? We have over a half-million words to communicate with, but half of everything we write and read depends on only 0.02 percent-on only those 100 most frequent words." (May, 1989)

References

Fry, E., Kress, J., and Fountoukidis, D. (2000). The Reading Teacher's Book of Lists. Paramus, New Jersey: Prentice Hall.

May, F. (1998). Reading as Communication: To Help Children Write and Read. Upper SaddleRiver, New Jersey: Merrill.

Sight Word Activities as Used in the Project Instructional Plan

Materials:
Index cards (3 x 5) or paper about the same size
Fry Word List
http://www.sd01.k12.id.us/curr iculum/la_supplement/la_frylis t.pdf

Day 1
1. Divide the Fry List in groups of 25 words and start with the group of 25 Fry words (ex 1-25, 26-50, etc.) where the child missed 5 or more words on a cold read, that is, with no practice.
2. Point to the word and ask the student to read it.
3. Decide whether to add the word to the word bank:
a. If the student reads the word correctly without hesitation, do not add it.
b. If the student to read it correctly within three seconds, do not add it.
c. If the student

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