Kindergarten Sight Word Printable Activities
Good readers know many common words automatically. These words are called "sight words," or "high-frequency" words. Activities with the Fry and Dolch sight-word lists can help your kindergartners fly into reading. Songs, books and games will cement these common words for good.
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Sight Words
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The two most commonly used "sight word" lists--the first words on the Dolch List and the Fry List--are similar but not identical. The Dolch list was created in the early 1900s and contains 315 words. The Fry list was created in 1996 and has 1,000 words arranged by the frequency with which they appear in text. The first 200 words make up 50 percent to 70 percent of all text.
Printable Lists, Flash Cards, Activities and Books
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Print lists, flash cards, activities and books for your kindergartners (see Resources). You can also do a Google search for sight words, Fry words or Dolch words. There are just too many great sights to list them all here!
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Top Ten Sight Words Activities
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Here are 10 of the most successful sight-word activities.
1. Play memory with a double set of cards. Children have to use the word in a sentence every time they make a match.
2. Write simple sentences or phrases using only sight words. Use the sentences strips for choral reading or have scavenger hunts in which the children find as many phrases as they can and then read them to the group.
3. Print and use the sight-word books. Have the students highlight sight words throughout the book. Then copy the book with no pictures and have the students illustrate the pages after reading them.
4. Play sight-word bingo. Groups of children can play by taking turns drawing a card and reading it and then covering up the square on their game cards that has the matching word.
5. Play telephone. Have a child draw a card and then whisper the word to the next child. Pass the words down a chain of kids and have the last student repeat the word he heard. Have the first child hold up the original flash card and then have the whole group read it after they finish giggling over the way the word changed.
6. Print out simple stories or poems along with an abbreviated word list. Have the children hunt for each word in the reading and color or circle it.
7. Sing silly songs and spell and define sight words. Use the Creative Learning Innovations site (see References) for song examples.
8. Hide sight-word cards in eggs or balloons and have the kids hunt for them and then read them.
9. Cut up the sight-word cards to make puzzles. Then have the students put the letters back together to form words on their lists and read them out loud.
10. Keep a set of flash cards with some magnetic letters and have the students build words with the magnets and then use them in a sentence.
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References
Resources
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