hi op! i have an almost 5 who is getting ready for K.

I have been wanting to work on sight words, so searched pinterest, and Juuuust yesterday found these awesome printable books.

my dd loved "making" our own books! Printing out, cutting pages in half, and stapling together. There are about 33 books all together! Emphasizing 11 different sight words. We read them for at least 30 minutes yesterday! We printed 6, and I printed one more just now.

Here is the link. Hope this helps.
http://teachingmama.org/sight-word-readers/

Anonymous wrote:Ha! OP here. Shows how little I know. I thought sight words was a way that some kids learn to read that is distinct from phonics. I remember first "reading" by memorizing the words in my favorite book. I didn't realize that there are some words that are "sight" words and some that are sounded out. I was talking about labeling household items like door, chair, wall, dresser, etc.

You are thinking of whole word recognition vs. phonics. But yeah, there are words that irregular and cannot be sounded out using phonics so you have to recognize the word by sight therefore those words are considering sight words. So sight words require whole word recognition skills, but as you now know are different from just randomly putting words up for kids to memorize.

The best way is the one that works for that child. Sight words work best in our home.

We had a Word Wall in our kitchen. Words were printed on multi-colored post-it notes. That way we could move them around-- make sentences out of them, group them in different ways, etc. We started out with sight words (it, if, we, etc.) and added other easy words as my son learned them (cat, dog, hat, boy, etc.). It was a lot of fun

Anonymous wrote:Label everything in their room and drill them constantly. There's no time to relax. It's reading time, all the time.

You are funny.

FWIW: I"m monolingual having failed Spanish class a few times. I was preparing to go to Spain and really wanted to learn some conversational Spanish. Two of my friends who were Spanish high-school teachers coached me and one thing they did was label my house with yellow stickies. It really helped but I was a rising 20th grader.

Label everything in their room and drill them constantly. There's no time to relax. It's reading time, all the time.

'sounding out' words is definitely in vogue - combined with the 'sight words' you can't sound out. There's been shifts over the years between what you're talking about which is often been called "whole word" compared to phonics. Anyway, my mom who was a teacher in the 70s mentioned the labeling things around the house & we did it as a game - where they kids thought is was a super fun game -- they picked objects -- I spelled out the words and my kids wrote them down & they taped them on. We've done a few times over the past few months. Any word reinforcement helps I think as kids are learning to read- and a combo of strategies doesn't hurt.

'sounding out' words is definitely in vogue - combined with the 'sight words' you can't sound out. There's been shifts over the years between what you're talking about which is often been called "whole word" compared to phonics. Anyway, my mom who was a teacher in the 70s mentioned the labeling things around the house & we did it as a game - where they kids thought is was a super fun game -- they picked objects -- I spelled out the words and my kids wrote them down & they taped them on. We've done a few times over the past few months. Any word reinforcement helps I think as kids are learning to read- and a combo of strategies doesn't hurt.

Ha! OP here. Shows how little I know. I thought sight words was a way that some kids learn to read that is distinct from phonics. I remember first "reading" by memorizing the words in my favorite book. I didn't realize that there are some words that are "sight" words and some that are sounded out. I was talking about labeling household items like door, chair, wall, dresser, etc.

Sight words and household items are different. Are you talking about labeling "chair", "table", "book"? Or placing words High Frequency Words in the house for practice: the, with, when, etc?

First Grade teacher here. Both would be great! If you can, get a list of the sight words and pick 4-5/week and put them somewhere you child will see them: bathroom mirror, bedside, kitchen. Practice reading them. Sight words, like PP said, just have to be memorized. You cannot sound them out.

Anonymous wrote:I remember when my friends' kids were starting to read they had index cards with the names of things stuck all over the house. Is that still considered a good way to teach beginning reading? Or is it all sounding it out now instead?

By definition, sight words are words that you cant sound out. You can practice them with flashcards, but labeling might be challenging as most sight words are not household items.

It can't hurt.

There's no right and wrong here.

I'm not sure if that's an effective way to teach sight words. In kindergarten, sight words are like: I, you, me, he, she, and, like, my, up, not, of, did, can, etc and all of those words are sort of hard to label. I did flashcards like the way you describe but only when I was trying to do learn the foreign language equivalent for common household items.

A mix of the two methods is best. The labels around the house may help and they couldn't hurt.

I remember when my friends' kids were starting to read they had index cards with the names of things stuck all over the house. Is that still considered a good way to teach beginning reading? Or is it all sounding it out now instead?