How to Teach Kids Sight Words

Teaching children to read is not easy and many individuals may wonder how to begin. Teaching sight words is a good start. Sight words are pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions and verbs that make up 65 percent of all written material. They are words that cannot be learned through the use of pictures. Most students begin learning sight words in kindergarten. Teachers have developed many different strategies to making the learning process fun for kids.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

1. Divide the words into groups. There are a certain number of words for each grade level. Divide them into groups of 25 so that the students are not overwhelmed.
2. Exercise your creativity and play games using sight words. Some common games are bingo, word search puzzles, matching and memory games.
3. Use flash cards with sight words. Have the children read through them often. Encourage them to take the flash cards with them and read them in the car or while waiting at the doctor's office.
4. Point out sight words in stories. When you read the children a story, ask them to point out the sight words. Choose books with sight words that they are learning.
5. Offer rewards for learning sight words. Develop a rewards system. For example, for every set of 25 words that they learn reward them with dog tags on a necklace.
6. Create a sight word notebook. As the children learn sight words have them write it in a notebook and develop a sentence using the word.
7. Test the children each week. Set goals for them to work towards and hold them accountable.

Tips & Warnings

• As a teacher, keep the parents involved and ask for their help.
• Repetition is key in learning and retaining sight words.
• Don't move onto the next group of words until the first group is learned.