We really aren’t talking about that many words!īut Virginia is quite correct that this sight word approach is often used on kids who are determined to be failures at phonics approaches. Some multisensory techniques would be useful depending on the age of the kid, such things as writing in the air, writing on the table, deciding on a clue for the word that the kid associates with the word, that kind of thing. That said, I think flashcards are pretty useless to a lot of ld kids. So I go by the idea that either you teach a very high frequency word as a sight word if it isn’t decodable or won’t be decodable for a long time to come and is very very useful. Some of them are actually decodable but the rules to apply them are more difficult (for example “the” is an open syllable). These are mostly high frequency words: want, the, many, etc. Words that are not decodable (something like 15-20%). Well maybe I am not as extreme as Virginia. No kiddding - just had a little girl working in her second language, eight months ago was barely reading primer level, today reading fluently a story at the grade 2 level, three or four multisyllable words pronounced smoothly with no trouble although (being second language) I had to go back and tell her what they meant. Over time - and the amount of time will depend on the student and any disabilities she may have - the student develops the ability to scan at speed until it’s *faster* than searching the overloaded memory banks for sight words. This consistent approach works very well, in generally I see much better than memorizing word lists.Įxcept for the formal phonics series, we never read word lists, and very rarely flash cards I use very structured controlled vocabulary readers that introduce high frequency words and repeat them over and over and over again but each time in different context so it is the word form that is learned, not other details. I introduce digraphs and vowel combinations and variant vowel sounds informally from the early stages as they are met in high-frequency words, I teach phonics formally as well, and I show students how to sound out words and test variant vowel sounds. I teach kids to scan ALL words from left to right, period. Are you supposed to sound it out or are you supposed to search your visual memory banks for it? How can you know which set of conflicting rules to use? HUH? And really, put yourself in the student’s shoes - you are reading along and you come to an unfamiliar word. I find that it is inefficient and confusing to teach reading twice over with two different sets of rules: these words you sound out by phonics but these words you memorize by sight and these words you memorize this year but next year we let you into the secret of vowel combinations and you are supposed to figure out the phonics from them. On the sight words, I am a bit on the extreme, but then again my approach has taught an awful lot of kids to read after the sight word teachers had given them up as unteachable. Why is she in special ed? What are her disabilities? What help is she getting to overcome them? Does she have extra difficulties with hearing or language or second language or vision or health? What is her IQ and general learning ability? Why was she a total non-reader before this year - was it real difficulty reaching her, or was she more or less allowed to drop through the cracks? Depending on the answers, there are several different scenarios, anything from a slow learner who is doing as much as could be expected, to a gifted dyslexic who can master amlost anything once given a start.
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