Sight Words

Give students choice in how they practice their sight words!

First grade is an important year for becoming a reader. Reading most frequently occurring words by sight are the best way to get students to become fluent readers of increasingly difficult texts, This year, I added more ways to differentiate sight words and give students more choice in the way that they practice them.

Get the Menu and Recording Sheets Here!

In my last post I explained our Homework Binders. This is big part of how I will teach sight words. Here's the link to the full post Homework Binders Post
Here's the section of the post that is about the sight words in the binder.

The third tab is sight words-this is filled with word lists that students must practice and read at home. I put the word lists inside plastic sleeves and will write on the sleeves using a permanent marker some of my coworkers laminated the word lists that can also be written on with permanent marker.

• Sight Word List Tracker to keep track of lists that students can read Sight Word List Tracker
• Irregular Word List-with the most frequent words that can NOT be sounded out Irregular Word Lists
• National Geographic Reach for Reading Week by Week word lists with irregular words in bold.Nat Geo Word Lists
• Most frequent Dolch words list-I retyped these in a font meant to help dyslectic readers 
• Download the font for free here Dyslexia.font
• Dolch Word Lists

Bundles of all the items listed above:
Tracker and Word Lists Bundle w/ Nat Geo
Tracker and Word List Bundle-Irregular and Dolch only

This year those word lists will be the words that my first graders will be working on throughout the year. I will assess students weekly on their word lists. If they can read all the words on the lists they will get a star next to that list on the Sight Word List Tracker. If they can't read a word fluently, within a second, I will circle that word. Then write the words they need to practice on this Words to Work On page.

While I am working with a group, other students are working independently. I use a version of the Daily 5 model created by the Two Sisters for what the students are doing independently. I split the Word Work into two parts: Sight Words and Phonics. When students work on sight words they can choose how they want to work on their words from their words to work on page.

Sight Word Menu and Recording Sheets

Speller's Choice Menu

Rainbow Write

Vowels and Consonants

Sight Word Stamp

Silly Script

Build it, mix it up, build it again (3 times)

I also made these sight word practice pages for all the sight words in our curriculum. I usually send them for homework practice. Sight Word Practice Pages National Geographic Reach for Reading Gr. 1

I'm trying something new this year to put the sight words into context. I wrote these spelling stories with the spelling words from Unit 1 of National Geographic Reach for Reading. I thought it would help put the sight words into context for my almost full class of  ESL students.Unit 1 Spelling Stories Nat Geo

Spelling Story Unit 1, Week 1 Freebie!