Sight words pre school
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Anonymous
| If a 4 yo preschooler is recognizing and reading all dolch sight words - would you consider that “gifted” ? |
Anonymous
| Obviously. Very gifted. Very smart. Genius. |
Anonymous
| I'd consider that precocious. Knowing sight words at that age is early, but not unheard of. That alone would not classify a child as gifted. |
Anonymous
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No. My 4 year old is reading, as are several other in her class. I was told by her teachers that the expectation for Prek4 in her DCPS is that they will all be reading by the end of the year.
Some kids start reading at 3! Do you have parent-teacher conferences or some other way to check in with her teachers? They can probably explain the milestones better than I can given I don’t know your kid |
Anonymous
| Smart, but my kid was reading at 3. They were just able to decode well via sight reading. Smart kid, not genius. For some kids it just comes easier too. |
Anonymous
| My understanding is early reading is not really indicative of anything (except in some cases autism). It doesn't predict better academic outcomes. There is research indicating kids that read later might even have slightly better comprehension skills. |
Anonymous
| What does "dolch" mean? |
Anonymous
We are at a DCPS preschool and have been told/expect the same. Several children were doing this at the end of pre-k 3 (3s and 4s); it is now an expectation at the end of pre-k 4 (4s and 5s). |
Anonymous
| Oh and I also don’t know what “gifted” means? And why it matters? Unless you’re getting your kid into a specific program and need to show these skills? |
Anonymous
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“Gifted” as a label is a whole kettle of worms that provokes a great deal of hostility and only rarely offers any benefit. Most of the time, it’s irrelevant, anyway.
Kids regardless of the label (or lack thereof) should be exposed to as many things as possible and encouraged to pursue their interests. They should be given challenges and enough education that they will be eventually prepared pursue any opportunities they wish. Knowledge isn’t a limited resource that has to be rationed, and education isn’t a competition, much less a zero sum game. The more things learned by more kids, the better it will be gor our society as a whole. If your child is showing an interest in reading, that’s fantastic. Learning all the sight words is certainly an impressive feat of memory for a young child. Generally, I recommend avoiding sight words all together when learning to read and sticking strictly to phonics as a better method for instruction. If your child is able to use their knowledge of sight words to read fluently, that’s great, they may have subconsciously picked up enough phonics to fill in the gaps. If they’re still learning to read, I highly recommend you switch to focusing on phonics. It may be frustrating to them at first going from reading stories from words they’ve memorized to sounding out words, but it’s a critical skill. There are thousands of words in the English language, but only 44 phonemes (sounds) and less than 300 letter or letter combinations to spell those sounds. That may sound like a lot, but it’s far less to learn than memorizing individual words. Moreover, if you learn a list of sight words then you can read that particular list of sight words. If you learn how to sound out words, then you can read anything you could understand if you heard it. Whether or not your child is gifted, it sounds like they’ve had a wonderful start. Just remember to keep it fun and don’t let it become a chore. At this stage it’s far more important that they love whatever they’re learning, and consider learning itself as fun and exciting, than that they learn specific academic content. |
Anonymous
I'm a big phonics proponent, but when you are still at 'The cat sat on the mat' it is much easier to explain to a kid that t-h-e says (tha/the) than to explain the multiple th sounds and the schwa versus long e pronunciation we use with. The kid can then focus on the sounds for the rest of the easily decodable words and eventually understand hard and soft th and schwa and the rest. Meanwhile they get to feel accomplished from finishing BOB books or something similar. No need to go completely extreme. |
Anonymous
It’s a list of high-frequency sight words that are used in teaching kids how to read. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolch_word_list Personally, I think it’s better to avoid memorizing specific words and focus instead on phonics. |
Anonymous
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My 5 y/o daughter knows around 40-50 words by sight, with a year to go before kindergarten. I believe she is gifted, but not because she has memorized some words and has the phonics skills to decode many more. What's far more significant is her expansive vocabulary and grammatically-correct use of words like "intended", "concerned", "differently", etc., as well as her ability to listen to hour-long stories and accurately retell parts of them or answer questions about key details. Reading is an algorithmic process, but it is not higher-level thinking.
As to the sight words, I think it's best to combine phonics with a high-frequency word list like Dolch or Fry. My daughter was definitely struggling with having to sound "the" and "and" out every time she encountered them, which made reading virtually impossible. But the way we've been solving that problem is through a lot of repetition in the words she uses phonics to decode. I'd recommend reorganizing the Dolch list around the phonics skills you are working on right now. For example, one thing I'll do differently with my son is have him do a lot more practice with the VC words on the Dolch list when we start blending. Those words are scattered all across the list, but key words to start with would be: in, is, it, up, am, at, on, an, as, us, if. No reason to teach "up" to a preschooler but wait until the Third Grade to tackle "if"... |
Anonymous
No. Not an indicator of gifted. But it suggests the child inherited good visual memory, which is a fine thing.. |
Anonymous
| Call Mensa. |