Once I read a forum post by a homeschool mom who had tutored reading for 16 years. In this thread, she proudly stated that anyone who knew how to teach reading knows that sight words and phonics don’t go together. Well, I may not be a reading tutor, but I have taught my own kids how to read, and I beg her pardon and yours if you agree with this mom, but sight words have played an important part in increasing the confidence, competence, and literacy of my own homeschool kids. If sight words are so controversial, why do I propose that you teach them?
Sight Words Accelerate Fluency
What are sight words? The phrase “sight words” was first coined in the early 1940s by Edward Dolch, PhD., in a study published under the title, “Problems in Reading.” Doctor Dolch compiled a list of the most frequently used words in childrens’ literature (220 “service” words like the words “a – about – after” and 95 nouns like the words “day – book – home”). According to the findings of his study, beginning readers who learned these sight words became more fluent readers in a shorter period of time.
In the 1990s, another PhD., Edward Fry, updated the results of Dolch’s findings by compiling a list of the 1000 most common or “instant” words. In fact, Fry found that there are 100 words which are used in over half of most written publications. What both men discovered is that repeated exposure to high frequency words accelerates the reading process because children instantly recognize these words (and presumably know the meaning) which means the child only has to phonetically decode unfamiliar words. The best example of a sight word would be the child’s name because he sees it so often, he doesn’t have to decode it, and he knows what it means.
Sight Words are Fully Decodable
Perhaps this homeschool mom who objected to the use of sight words was thinking about the old “look-say” method of teaching reading skills introduced in the early 1800s by Thomas Gallaudet to teach deaf-mute children how to read. Although Gallaudet created his method for those who couldn’t hear the phonetic sounds of the English langauge, the famous educator Horace Mann adopted the look-say method of whole word recognition for the Massachusetts common school system, and soon thereafter, the Columbia Teacher’s College began to incorporate this method in their curriculum. I am not a fan of this type of reading instruction for hearing children.
Yes, I do advocate learning high-frequency sight words, but to those who object, I contend that most of the 300 most common sight words are fully decodable if you take them apart syllable-by-syllable. Take, for instance, the word “about.” Any preschooler with phonics experience could sound out this word as follows: ” uh-buh-ow-tuh,” and for the word, “where,” the homeschool child would say “whuh-eh-ruh-uh.” Simply speed up the pronunciation enough times, and the homeschool child can decode the sight word. So these are not exclusively “sight” words in that most of them can be fully decoded by the homeschool child who is learning how to read. In fact, a better label for the top 300 words would be “instant” words because these are the words that a beginning is able to instantly recognize and comprehend.
Sight Words are Easy to Learn
The very best way to teach your beginning reader sight words is to read aloud! Remember the more you expose your homeschool child to these most-frequently used words, the more familiar these words will become. In fact, if Dr. Fry’s theory that the top 100 sight words appear in over half of written texts, then reading aloud would be the easiest way to teach sight words because you wouldn’t even have to think about teaching them. Just read a variety of books on a daily basis, and you are sure to cover the top words.
To prove this point, I tested three homeschool friends (one 8 year old girl and two 10 year old boys) with all three sight word lists included in the appendix of my book on classical homeschooling, Trivium Mastery. I gave sight words list 1 (the 100 most frequently used words) to the 8 year old. I asked her to read the list from top to bottom as quickly as she could. Without hesitation, she read all 100 words perfectly and never stopped to sound out a single word. I repeated the process with the 10 year old boys, and they, too, instantly recognized all of the words on lists 2 and 3 (second and third most-frequently used 100 words) and accurately pronounced them without error. None of these three kids have ever purposefully studied sight words. Their moms just read to them on a regular basis.
However, if you are the type of homeschool parent who wants a little more assurance, you can systematically teach all 300 sight words to your preschool or early elementary child through simple games like concentration, hangman, word search, bingo, or go fish. Just select 15-20 words at a time, and work on them until they are mastered. Another approach is to start by showing the child the sight word, saying it, defining it, then using the word in a sentence. If you want you can have the child copy the sight word, or you could play a dictation game and have your homeschool child write the sight words. My kids always liked playing games to beat the clock, so use your kitchen timer to make the sight word recognition games a little more fun. Remember sight words are not a complete reading system, but they are a great way to boost reading motivation and confidence!
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Besides Dr. Fry’s three sight words lists included in the appendix of Trivium Mastery, there are lots of other tools to help you as a homeschool parent teach your child the fundamental skill of reading. What creative ideas do you have for teaching sight words?
Try playing a board game called Er-u-di-tion that incorporates both sight words and phonics.
This award winning game helps children learn to read, spell and understand the most common words in the English language while playing an entertaining board game.
Cards are categorized so children of all reading levels can play together!
Homeschool parents have many obstacles to face including teaching a kid to read. It is one of the issues we faced in our household too.
When I first taught my children to read, I used a method of phonics, but quickly realized this worked for my eldest but not my youngest. She didn’t grasp reading. So after trial and error I began to realize she was a visual learner who needed both elements to learn to read. She only became successful in learning after the sound and visual were combined. And now she is reading at a higher grade level than her fellow students.
I have seen a huge improvement, and suggest for anyone whose kid is struggling with reading to try using both sound and visual to help their kid overcome it too.
I’ve read about phonics, and I’ve read about sight words, but I haven’t read anything addressing whole language instruction, and by whole language I DO NOT mean “Look-say” or “just read books to them.” I’m talking about the importance of teaching children not only phonics and sight words, but also strategies like context clues, reading on and then going back and seeing what would make sense (and then verifying the prediction with, you guessed it, phonics), using picture clues, etc. Reading is a complex process, and I think we owe it to our children to put as many tools in their reading toolboxes as possible. I wish whole language instruction were more fully understood – I think, when done properly, that it offers a very broad and comprehensive method of reading instruction.
Thanks for your thoughtful comment, Rebekah. We used all of the strategies that you mentioned. You sound like you’ve had some experience teaching whole language theory. Would you mind expanding on your understanding?
This is mostly for Diane, because she asked, but also for anyone else interested:
Whole language posits that if you start with real literature, whole stories, as opposed to syllables in isolation (strict phonics) you will capture and hold a child’s attention better; there is a better chance of making children into lifelong lovers of reading. So in whole language, we start as a base with a story, and from the story we take our individual lessons, which should be some phonics, some reading in context, using picture clues, predicting and verifying, etc. The problem with strictly phonics-based reading programs is that by the time a child is ready to read, their imaginations and their language abilities far outstrip their abilities to decode words. So do we only give them “Hip and Hop are happy,” because that’s what they can sound out? This does nothing to build their narrative skills or their vocabulary – both of which will be crucial to academic success in the not too distant future. And, I would argue, it’s BORING – doing little to motivate the child to want to read more. Instead, we should engage them with real stories and poetry, written by respected authors, that have meaning beyond phonics. Out of these books we make little mini lessons, teaching children that the chunks of letters in the book are words, and that words are made up of syllables, and syllables of letters, which have their corresponding sounds. We teach about rhyme and rhythm, about description and sequence. We teach, in fact, all they need to know about reading until they become independent readers. Whole language has a bad rap – and deservedly so, I think, because when it first came into vogue, it was more or less thrust upon teachers without adequate training or followup – in some cases, just the injunction to throw out the basal reader and use real books. Educators were not prepared to use the method as it had been designed, and predictably, failure sometimes resulted. But there are those of us who were fortunate to be mentored by people who understood it, and demonstrated it, and taught it as a holistic system – and our students were our daily proof of our success.
Rebecca,
Thank you for your comprehensive response; I understand whole language theory much better now. Real literature is the cornerstone of our home school, too, and your students were (and are) blessed to have you in their life! Books, glorious books!
I discovered your article on yahoo. Thanks for the interesting points you make.
How might you apply this to deaf children?
Hi William,
I wish I could offer some insight for deaf children, but I’m afraid that I have no experience in this special situation. Do any other readers have success stories to share?