phonics

CVC Interactive Notebook Templates

04/27/2024 by admin

Everything you need for emergent readers! CVC Interactive Notebook Templates are a step-by-step program that includes writing, reading, and spelling exercises, as well as review, puzzles, game boards, and folding activities. Interactive Notebooks offer flexibility in curriculum design and an excellent way to shape students’ notebook habits and student accountability.

Based on Phonics & Spelling, Book 2, by Kinney Brothers Publishing, the CVC Templates are built on a 45-word vocabulary base with nine words for each a-e-i-o-u vowel set. Each vowel set is restricted to three word families. With the goal of moving emergent readers toward reading fluency, the differentiated exercises take students step by step with reading, writing, and spelling exercises, as well as an introduction to primary sight words. Teachers can purchase each vowel unit or all five units bundled together!

You can check out the full bundle and individual units here: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/CVC-Word-Interactive-Notebook-Template-Bundle-ESL-ELL-Newcomer-4622892

Be sure to check out my blog post Teaching CVC Words – What, When, & How

Teaching Pronunciation

03/24/2020 by admin

As a teacher with limited class time, how can you best meet your students’ needs when it comes to pronunciation practice? With younger kids, if you teach phonics with a rigorous focus on phonemes, pronunciation is built into the program. In this post I detail some additional activities that you and your students may enjoy. When teaching older kids and adults, a bit of time set aside for pronunciation can allow for focused, effective, and enjoyable activities in an otherwise busy schedule. Importantly, consistent practice is key to making a difference in your students’ pronunciation.

There are a variety of downloadable pronunciation games and templates in this post. They are free for you to download and use in class. There are also numerous resource links you may want to return to in the future, so be sure to bookmark this page! As always, if there are activities you especially enjoy using in class, let readers know in the comments!

Let’s begin! I’ll start with activities for younger students and move toward activities appropriate for older language learners.

Read to Your Kids!

When I read a story in class, I seat my kids close to me so they can hear and feel the sounds resonating from me. I often invite students to turn pages, point to pictures, and when possible, participate as a group in the reading of the story. Your kids will be picking up your pronunciation as it arrives to their ears in word inflections, emotions, and the rhythms of the story. A tale well told can make a powerful impression on little kids!

Books are numerous, but here is a short list of 10 books I especially enjoy reading in class. As I’m always on the lookout for new titles, please let me know the books you enjoy for story time in the comments below!

Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes by Eric Litwin
The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
Today is Monday by Eric Carle
Polar Bear’s Underwear by Tupera Tupera
Clap Your Hands by Lorinda Bryan Cauley
Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Eric Carle
Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear? by Eric Carle
No, David! by David Shannon
Excuse Me! by Karen Katz
Cat in a Hat by Dr. Seuss

Teach Phonics!

Phonics and Spelling Kinney Brothers Publishing

Phonics lessons are the cornerstone of my kids’ classes. Over the years, and with intention, I built pronunciation practice into my program and that includes phonics and spelling lessons all through elementary school. From the outset, songs, storybooks, and phonics associations introduce a vocabulary bank I exploit and build on in future lessons. As students progress learning CVC words, long vowel sounds, sight words, plurals, and verb conjugations, I never have to worry about exposing my younger students to enough pronunciation and listening practice.

The result of this isn’t only for good pronunciation delivery. In the beginning, it’s especially important that students learn how to hear me, to be able to individuate the 44 sounds of my language and then imitate how I vocally vibrate, aspirate, and fricitate as an English speaker. So, the path to proper and consistent English pronunciation starts with listening and identifying, and THEN speaking! Phonics lessons will give you a wealth of material and a consistent focus when teaching young children.

Chants and Tongue Twisters

As I mentioned in my post, The Drama is Real, chants have legs! Like songs, they dance about in children’s heads right out of the classroom. This kind of activity isn’t just for younger students. Older kids and adults can benefit enormously from pronunciation activities that include fun exercises like tongue twisters. Remind your students that professional newscasters, actors, and singers use tongue twisters as warmup exercises all.the.time! Check out engVid for 50 classic tongue twisters that will help your students learn to enunciate. And don’t forget rhymes for choosing players! You’ll be surprised how quickly your students will pick up these chants if you employ them regularly.

Icka bicka soda cracker,
Icka bicka boo.
Icka bicka soda cracker,
Out go YOU!

Bubble gum, bubble gum in a dish.
How many pieces do you wish?
1-2-3 and you are IT!

Minimal Pairs

Minimal pair work is essential and a good deck of minimal pair flashcards is worth its weight in gold! Minimal pairs are words that differ in one sound only, like pit and pet. When you teach English words in groups that point out differences as well as similarities, your students will be able to hear the differences that distinguish words from one another. Early phonics lessons like cat, can, and cap, work like minimal pair exercises and shouldn’t be dropped once students learn to read. Minimal pairs are excellent listening and speaking practice for older kids and adults as well. They can be employed in a variety of ways besides testing and assessing.

Playing games with minimal pairs allows students to flex their vocal muscles and exercise their ears. If you’re looking for flashcard activity ideas, check out my 50+ Flashcard Activities. Try a game where students listen to a string of words to identify one that is different. A simple ‘missing card’ activity is easy to set up and can be a real challenge! Put three or four words on the board, have students cover their eyes, and remove one of the cards. Students guess which card is missing. Try silently mouthing or whispering target words during a game. This is good for focusing on and exaggerating mouth positions for English sounds. If you’re in a space that allows for more rambunctious fun, try relays or positioning students at opposite ends of the room for some loud pronunciation practice. Placing a physical barrier between players forces them to listen more carefully and communicate clearly!

You can download a free set of 25 minimal pair flashcards with five sets of words for each sound pair. The flashcards include master cards, pair cards, and individual word cards so you can adapt them to a variety of games and activities. Also included is a PowerPoint template for making your own! The zip file is large, so have patience when downloading. Caroline Bowen, AM, Phd, of speech-language-therapy.com has created a generous online list of words you can draw from when putting together your own minimal pair flashcards and worksheets.

Exit Tickets

The thing I love about Exit Tickets is that they’re a quick way to assess lessons taught or determine lessons that need to be taught. Hand cards out just before the end of class, go through a quick listening exercise and get them back as students go out the door. Voilà! Instant data to mull over!

These free Exit Tickets are aligned to the Minimal Pair Flash Cards above and include a PowerPoint template. I also have ABC Exit Tickets and CVC Exit Tickets available in my online store that I recommend checking out!

Pronunciation Maze

This pronunciation maze is a simple but effective puzzle I regularly use when teaching my kids past tense conjugations and the three -ed sounds /id/, /d/, and /t/. The grid template can also be used for the plural sounds /s/, /z/, and /ez/ and first, second, and third syllable accents. To play, students move from the top-left starting point to the bottom-right Finish by connecting the same target sounds in a maze-like fashion. Use the same board as a warmup or review in a 4-in-a-Row game! Laminate the boards and use counters and you’ll have this game at your disposal for years to come!

You can download three past tense mazes here. The free download includes an answer key, blank and PowerPoint templates for creating your own mazes.

Record Your Students

Recording your students doesn’t have to be for a presentation or speech contest. Having students listen to themselves can be fun, revealing, and instructive! It’s like a sound selfie! Choose an easy reading passage that students are familiar with for individual recordings or a dialogue where students can work in pairs. A simple passage from a fairy tale provides older students with expressive melodrama and fun characters like villains, princesses, and frogs. Remember, many of your adult students are also parents and can be pretty good at reading a children’s story!

Telephone Activity

This activity will give you lots of listening and speaking practice in a unique and challenging format! In short, you’re replacing the numbers of a telephone pad with a set of 10 minimal pair words. First, practice the set of words that appear in the activity. Hand out the telephone sheets to students and practice the words again until students are somewhat familiar with their placement on the telephone pad. With a prepared set of telephone numbers, dictate the words to your students. When everyone is finished, check their accuracy. This is a good activity for small groups and pairs as well.

Download this free activity with six gamepads plus a blank pad and PowerPoint template for creating your own.

Pronunciation Pyramid

This is a classic activity, easy to set up, and an excellent warm-up or cool-down exercise. Starting at the top tier of the pyramid, say one of the two words and have students circle the word they hear. Gradually work down the pyramid until you arrive at a number at the bottom. Ask students what number they ended on and see how accurately they listened! Up the ante on this activity by preparing a list of sentences so students have to catch the words in context.

Three free pyramid games plus blank and PowerPoint templates can be downloaded here.

Phonemic Charts

Phonemic Chart Kinney Brothers Publishing

Phonemic Charts are a wonderful tool to help students make sense of English pronunciation. Click here to download the free chart above that includes a black and white version. The British Council at teachingenglish.org.uk put together a set of free and very large phonemic symbol charts you can tack to classroom walls or reference during lectures. I recommend exploring the British Council website as they have some excellent online resources!

If you want to transcribe words or grab the phonemic symbols for your own resources, check out phonetizer.com/ or ipa.typeit.org/ You can translate or type in the codes and then copy and paste to your own documents. When working with the symbols, many fonts will not support the characters. Charis SIL is a supported font you can download here. If there are other fonts you recommend, help a teacher out and let me know in the comments below!

Charts, Word Walls, and Games

Pronunciation Practice Kinney Brothers Publishing Donald's English Classroom

To maintain an awareness of proper pronunciation, as an intervention when necessary, or for specialized practice, I developed a series of easy charts, flash cards, and games. With age-neutral images and easy vocabulary, I use these with my elementary through adult English classes.

The charts include consonants, vowels, blends, digraphs, ‘r’ controlled sounds, and plurals. Each set also has aligned flashcards, Bingo games, and I Have/Who Has activities. Click here to learn more about the complete lineup of resources from my online store, Donald’s English Classroom. In a previous post, A Game With Legs, I detail the myriad ways you can use I Have/Who Has activities in class!

In closing…

It should go without saying, just doing a couple of activities once or twice will not guarantee good pronunciation or fix the problems your students may be having. Pronunciation is NOT a one-off lesson. It’s also important to remember, language learners will only be able to take in so much pronunciation input at one time. More is not always better. Studies have shown that you can teach as few as 3 to 5 minimal pairs in order for students to show spontaneous generalization to other words containing the target sounds. Focused practice will lead your students to a better understanding of English pronunciation so that an occasional “nudge” will keep them on track.

The important thing is to integrate these activities into your class routine whenever possible and find ways to make pronunciation practice an enjoyable challenge.

For convenience, here is a quick list of the six free downloads in this post from Kinney Brothers Publishing:

You might be interested in checking out Teaching Pronunciation, A Followup. This post details a variety of activities I created for my own classes and available in my online store, Donald’s English Classroom.

As always, best of luck in your classes!

Donald Kinney
Kinney Brothers Publishing

Teaching Plurals

11/08/2019 by admin

In speaking exercises, I teach my ESL kids plurals early on, for the main reason that it can’t be avoided for very long when teaching even the simplest phrases, such as I like… or I have… Importantly, when I teach kids plural sounds, I’m also preparing them for future lessons using the same morphological rules governing third-person verbs and possessives. My goal is to start the exposure early, be intentional in its roll out, and use the vocabulary as much as possible in later lessons.

Looking at the rules above, it’s a LOT to take in. Even I can’t remember all the letter-to-sound associations! It’s like trying to remember the order of stacked adjectives! Ugh! It’s much easier to get students used to using the language rather than memorizing and then applying the rules.

The Roll Out

My youngest pre-school kids get their first exposure to plurals with picture books, songs, and chants that focus on counting. Then, when I begin formally teaching plurals, I remind them that they’ve already been using the language.

When teaching plurals to my kindergarten and early elementary school students, I don’t teach pronunciation as a set of rules, but instead, stress awareness of the sounds made when modifying nouns to make them plural; the three sounds being /s/, /z/, and /ɨz/. I break this down into a series of lessons that 1) introduce listening to the differences in singular and plural words grouped by final consonant sounds, 2) identifying the voiced and unvoiced sounds with simple interactive activities that include practice making the sounds, and 3) employing plurals in games and activities – all in that order.

I start with singular and plural flash card examples, saying each word and asking students if they can identify where the words are different and what that different sound is. Reading them again, I have students identify which word is being said, sometimes with eyes closed. Next we do the same activity using simple sentences students are already familiar with, e.g., I like cats or I have one cat. A simple Missing Word activity is perfect for getting students to use the words in the context of a game.

Plural Flash Cards Kinney Brothers Publishing

Soon after this, I introduce vocabulary with the -z sound and we compare the final sounds of the words from the previous lessons. How are they different? Can you make the two different sounds? Can you feel the difference in the voiced and unvoiced sounds when you touch your throat?

When the class is ready, I add –ez words. I ask students how the last sounds of cats, dogs, and foxes are different and we practice making the sounds. Once again, I get the kids using the vocabulary with simple flashcard activities such as a Circle Pass amongst students. Be sure to check out my 50+ Flash Card Activities if you’re looking for more game ideas.

Plural Flash Cards 2 Kinney Brothers Publishing

Importantly, leave the cards on a board or table accessible to students during the weeks you are teaching these lessons. This allows kids to experiment on their own without a teacher hovering over them.

Plural Vibes

The reason we use -s and -z sounds is a matter of language efficiency when speaking. You can teach kids to be aware of the vibration (voiced) or lack thereof (unvoiced) in the sound of the last consonant by having them touch their throats when saying the words. In words like cat, there is no vibration (unvoiced) in the last consonant, and the –s continues this non-vibrating sound into the plural. The final g in dog has a vibration (voiced) and, for efficiency in speaking, the –z sound of the plural continues this vibration as a plural. For native speakers, this is one of those “default” rules we employ without even realizing it, but will readily recognize if misspoken. For more on this, check out the video below from the Elemental English Youtube channel.

The effect of these lessons is to build a physical and aural language experience that students can draw from as in Jean Berko Gleason‘s Wug Test below. Keep in mind, this isn’t going to happen without extensive exposure and practice.

J.B. Gleason devised the Wug Test as part of her earliest research (1958), which used nonsense words to gauge children’s acquisition of morphological rules‍—‌for example, the “default” rule that most English plurals are formed by adding an /s/, /z/ or /ɨz/ sound depending on the final consonant, e.g., hat–hats, eye–eyes, witch–witches. A child is shown simple pictures of an imaginary creature or activity, with a nonsense name, and prompted to complete a statement about it: This is a WUG. Now there is another one. There are two of them. There are two________. The Wug Test also includes questions involving verb conjugations, possessives, and other common derivational morphemes.

Review, review review!

Once the lessons have been introduced, it’s time to find opportunities to use them! Review activities and additional vocabulary will keep the lessons fresh in students’ minds.

Monotonously flipping through flashcard decks isn’t the only way to review. Games are great for keeping your students’ skills up. As your kids get older, you can up-cycle the games you played when they were younger coupled with the new lessons. Vocabulary review activities like Bingo and I Have/Who Has are perfectly adaptable. Be sure to give students the opportunity to practice the language before playing the games.

Plural Games Kinney Brothers Publishing Donald's English Classroom

Charts are another capital way of keeping the vocabulary in front of your students. Include them in interactive notebooks or tack charts on a classroom board to provide students with references that can be used when speaking and writing.

Plural Charts Kinney Brothers Publishing Donald's English Classroom

Later on, my kids are reintroduced to plurals in their Phonics & Spelling books. Being already familiar with nouns as plurals, they’re prepared to create sentences with new vocabulary in context, like these are and those are.

Phonics Plural Lessons Kinney Brothers Publishing Donald's English Classroom

For older students and adults who already have vocabulary at their command, check out this plural set of readings and activities when reviewing or planning your next pronunciation boot camp lessons.

Pronunciation Bingo and I Have Who Has activity sets

Forward Teaching

Again, these early lessons are going to be helpful when you get ready to teach third-person verb conjugations and possessives, as the morphological rules that apply to the ending sounds of verbs are exactly the same as plurals. Remind your students of this simple pronunciation fact!

eat – eats
run – runs
dance – dances

it – its
her – hers
watch – watch’s

From their first exposure with counting books and plural pronunciation activities, your students’ lessons should build toward future fluency goals. Begin early and loop review activities into your lesson plans as students build their language skills. And don’t forget to have fun!

As always, best of luck in your classes!

Donald Kinney
Kinney Brothers Publishing

Interactive Notebooks – CVC Templates

06/14/2019 by admin

As a followup to my last post, I developed a series of CVC Templates to help teachers get up and running with their interactive notebooks.

Why Interactive Notebooks?

As an independent teacher offering my services in a variety of kids’ classes, one thing is a constant: no two places are the same. Interactive notebooks, though not a replacement for textbooks, offer me the flexibility to design a curriculum with the classroom resources and time restrictions I have to work with. They’re also an excellent way to shape students’ notebook habits; an intervention that became imperative considering the shabby state of some of my students’ notebooks. In turn, this extends their learning and creates a personalized resource where students can take ownership and track their progress.

Interactive Notebooks CVC Templates 2 - Kinney Brothers Publishing

The Program

Based on my textbook, Phonics & Spelling, Book 2, the CVC Templates are built on a 45-word vocabulary base with nine words for each a-e-i-o-u vowel set. Each vowel set is restricted to three-word families. With the goal of moving emergent readers toward reading fluency, the differentiated exercises take students step by step with reading, writing, and spelling exercises — as well as an introduction to primary sight words.

Interactive Notebooks CVC Templates 3 - Kinney Brothers Publishing

The Deal

These CVC Templates can be purchased as individual units or as a bundle. Click on the image below to visit my online store where you can download previews for each unit.

Again, if you have questions about setting up an interactive notebook, check out my previous blog post. With the help of these Templates, you’re going to create some awesome interactive notebooks!

As always, best of luck in your classes!

Donald Kinney

Kinney Brothers Publishing

Sight Words: What, When, and How

03/28/2018 by admin

What are Sight Words?

Whether you call them sight words, popcorn words, or high-frequency words, they are, by definition, “commonly used words that young children are encouraged to memorize as a whole or by ‘sight,’ so that they can automatically recognize these words in print without having to use any strategies to decode.” ^[1]

The Reading Teacher’s Book of Lists claims that the first 25 most frequent words make up about one-third of all printed material in English, and that the first 100 make up about one-half of all written material. Let that thought sink in. 50%! The obvious advantage of learning sight words is that it can have a powerful impact on a student’s reading fluency.

‘Sight Word’ is a bit of a misnomer because it implies that a word is learned simply by seeing it in its complete form. For this reason, flashcards are the most common way teachers will try to ‘drill’ the recognition of given words simply by repetition. If students are developmentally not ready in their spoken or orthographic skills, no matter how hard you may try, the words will not stick in their brains.

One problem with sight words is that many, though not all, lack dependable letter–sound correspondences (of = /uv/ and is = /iz/). Most words are more regular than not, especially in the consonant features. For example, the high-frequency word said is 50 percent regular; what would otherwise be a dependable ai digraph is irregular compared to the pronunciation of words like tail or paint. Nonetheless, it’s important teachers address these irregularities with students rather than avoiding them or assuming that students will eventually ‘pick up’ the differences.

In addition, high frequency words can be abstract, difficult if not impossible to represent using pictures, and especially difficult to understand where meaning may have an inferred understanding through context (something a second language learner doesn’t have the advantage of in early language development.) It can be very elusive to create a clear mental model of words like have and get, both of which can cross several different word choices in a language learner’s native language. Just as complicated is a word like was which refers to a past existential state of being. I remember trying to explain to students that “I win a prize” infers that if I win a game, I will get a prize, whereas, in Japanese, it is akin to saying “I prized a game.”

This is why students of English need to be exposed to the patterns of speech and inferred meaning of sight words early on in oral exercises, chants, and songs. Inevitably, as you move children from decoding individual words to decoding language in connected text, sight words should be a regular part of your ESL program.

Two popular sight word lists you might want to check out are Dolch’s Sight Words (by frequency) and Fry’s Sight Words (by grade level). Both of these lists are offered for free on sightwords.com.

When to Teach Sight Words

If you are teaching ESL students with the eventual goal of reading (and you should be), you need to begin thinking about sight words long before students encounter them in writing exercises. Building a vocabulary base that includes high frequency words that is not exclusive to nouns and verbs, contributes to a sense of word and meaning in context. Vocal chants and early Q&A exercises should include sight words in anticipation that these words will be encountered again in written text. Reading story books in class is also important for showing children how you read in English and, where possible, should include picture prompts and word cues so children can participate in the reading of the story.

Whether you’re teaching very young ESL students in class, or a parent trying to prepare your child for a future of reading, many of the approaches to introducing reading and books are the same. Check out this list of recommended activities for parents from SmartParentAdvice and consider how they may be applied in the classroom.

Before teaching children sight words orthographically, it is necessary that children have a solid foundation of the ABCs, phonemes and understand concepts of word. From there, learning sentence structure and decoding meaning in context should be taught in that order.

In other words, you can’t teach kids the concept of word without first teaching the ABCs. Trying to use flash cards to teach sight words, like visual designs, out of context and with no relationship to connected meaning, will NOT make the words stick nor will they transfer to automatic written understanding. Likewise, expecting a child to write and rewrite a sentence when they can’t yet decode the individual words is not going to eventually impart meaning.

When students understand the ABCs and their associated sounds, can combine those sounds into a concept of word, and are capable of understanding sentence constructs, THAT is the time to begin teaching and exercising sight words. The good news is that many children learn these concepts in their own language at a very young age and have the ability to transfer that understanding to a new language and a new set of rules.

How to Teach Sight Words

There are many ways to strengthen your students’ knowledge and recognition of sight words in text and out of text.

How do you begin to teach sight words? Again, start early by reading to your classes, and importantly, showing kids how you are reading. By simply pointing to each word as you read, you’re teaching them much more than just the words associated to colorful illustrations. You’re also teaching them about print concepts, moving from left to right, top to bottom, and the return sweep. All of these concepts can operate very differently in a child’s native written language.

Anticipating future exercises by building a targeted vocabulary and sentence pattern base is helpful when it comes time to introduce students to orthographic exercises. You will rely on that knowledge base to help them transition to written text and a speech-to-print match.

Keep in mind that eventually you’re going to be taking students beyond decoding words and into the realm of decoding sentences. The reading goals you set for your students should begin long before they start reading and writing.

If you have been teaching phonics and simple CVC words and your kids are ready to start using those words in easy sentences, you’re ready to begin teaching easy sight words. Along with your regular phonics exercises, start throwing sight words into the mix! If you want more ideas for working with flash cards, check out my 50+ Flash Card Activities post.

Writing Phrases and Patterning Mentor Texts

Children can write phrases that include high frequency words that build off patterned mentor (sample) texts. With ESL students, offering prompts and spelling can help children build sentences and understand the importance of the sight words in their placement amongst already learned words from their phonics lessons.

Matching

Using flash cards, line up a sentence and have students read the sentence until they are familiar with the order and meaning. Then cover up the sight words or pull them out and have students replace or match the words of the original sentence. This same activity works well as a worksheet with cutting and pasting to replace the missing words.

Matching is also an excellent way to reinforce learned words in out-of-text activities. The pages below, including Bingo, when reduced to their most basic skill, are simply matching activities. But, don’t tell the kids this! They think they’re playing a game or doing a puzzle! When you combine sight word matching with writing, coloring, counting, spinners, dice, random choice, and memory skills, you have activities that will engage and entertain students on a variety of levels.

Highlighting

In this example of an in-text exercise, students use a marker to highlight sight words. Like the sample at the beginning of this post, you can hand out highlighters, choose any random text, and have students highlight the words being learned. This is also a great cool down exercise for the whole class or activity for early finishers!

Pick Up

Pick Up is a super simple activity that keeps students engaged. Ask students to pick up all the words that begin with a particular consonant, vowel, or capital letter. Or have students listen to a spoken sentence and line up the words in order. Sentence Fishing is simply a pick-up type game and kids can’t get enough of it! Remember, when errors are made, it’s a rich opportunity to lead children to helpful conversations so they can articulate why a word doesn’t fit.

Sorting

Another out-of-text activity for developing sight words is sorting. Have children sort their word cards based on letters, sounds, or key words. Guide students in reflecting on what’s the same and what’s different. Grouping words with their beginning letters and then putting them in alphabetical order is another sorting plus ordering activity that will serve future dictionary work! Remember, always think ahead!

Flash Cards

Making sentences is a great way to get kids to review and use learned words to make more orthographic connections. Here, using flashcards not as a means to drill, but a way of exploring new connections gives students a creative way to build on lessons learned. Challenge your kids to see who can make the most surprising sentences!

Word Games

Word games are a fun way to reinforce sight words and can include I Have/Who Has activities, word search and crossword puzzles, and many board game type games. Introducing and playing these kinds of games in class is important. Students may be playing these kinds of games in their own language, but the only opportunity to do so in English may be in your classroom.

Sight words promote confidence. Because the first 100 sight words represent over 50% of English text, a child who has mastered the list of sight words can already recognize at least part of a sentence. Sight words provide clues to the context and promote reading comprehension.

As you move from ABCs through emergent reader activities, you’ll want to have reading goals in place. As a teacher, it is important to be able to recognize when a student has a command of the sounds of the alphabet, achieves the concept of word, is displaying rudimentary reading ability, and finally, capable of decoding and deriving meaning from connected text. These concepts must be developed in this order to achieve reading fluency. You won’t get there without teaching sight words. The habits that you build into the children’s learning activities will help them to acquire new words more quickly, build on their knowledge base to infer meaning, and progress more confidently in their studies.

If you are interested in more of the same kinds of exercises illustrated in this post, check out my Easy Sight Words worksheets for ESL students. If there are activities that you use in class that are not listed here, help a teacher out and leave a comment!

As always, best of luck in your classes!

Donald Kinney

Kinney Brothers Publishing

[1] Ravitch, Diane. (2007). EdSpeak : A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development, ISBN 1416605754.