Tutorial 2

Question: Discuss why sight words are important and how the approach can be
implemented and the activities that are employed in this approach.

Sight wordsthose instantly recognizable words that no longer require effort from a child
stand out as important for beginning reading.
They provide children success in their reading efforts, and they provide a starting point for
learning graphophonemic strategies.
Children learn most words through repeated exposure to them while reading various
materials.
Story time, shared reading, independent reading, and reading conferences all help learners
add to their store of sight words. Repetitious pattern books are especially well suited to
assisting the development of a sight-word vocabulary. Signs, labels, name tags, and other
print in the environment add to a childs sight-word vocabulary as well.
As children become aware of and interested in print, they are motivated to memorize some
of the words around them that have personal meaning. Most young children quickly learn
words such as Mom and love, for instance.
Sight words are very important for your child to master because, believe it or
not, sight words account for up to 75% of the words used in beginning
childrens printed material.

Importance of Sight words

Sight words promote confidence. Because the first 100 sight words

represent over 50% of English text, a child who has mastered the list of
sight words can already recognize at least half of a sentence. If your child
begins to read a book and can already recognize the words, chances are
he wont feel discouraged and put the book down, rather hell have more
confidence to read it all the way through. And, choose another!
Sight words help promote reading comprehension. When your child

opens her book for the first time, instead of trying to decipher what ALL of
the words mean, she can shift her attention to focus on those words she is
not familiar with. She will already know at least half of the words, so
focusing on the other half helps strengthen her understanding of the text.
Sight words provide clues to the context of the text. If your child is
familiar with the sight words, she may be able to decode the meaning of
the paragraph or sentence by reading the sight words. And, if a picture
accompanies the text, your child may be able to determine what the story
is about and come away with a few new words under her belt.

Tutorial 2

Activities
Matching teacher-made sentence strips to the story. Another is making and frequently
reading a class book that adapts the Brown Bear book pattern and repeats the key words.
For instance, students love pattern book about themselves. Each page has a picture of a
child, and the first few pages read, Isobel, Isobel, who do you see? I see Nathan looking at
me. Nathan, Nathan, who do you see? I see Ian looking at me. Teaching sight words with
pattern books can be much more effective than using vocabulary-controlled basal readers.

Games can also help children learn to recognize common words quickly. During literacy
choice time. This game involves fishing for paper fish that have a word from a favorite book
written on them. Each fish has a paper clip where its mouth should be, and the fishing poles
(pointers with string tied to them) each have a magnet at the end of the line. When Tenzin
hooks a fish, he cant keep it unless he can read the word. If he has trouble landing his fish,
his fishing buddies can give him clues. A clue can be a reminder of what story the word was
in, the meaning of the word, or another word that rhymes with the word. The active and
interactive nature of this game is an important part of its success.