Sight Words

If you have been teaching for more than a few years, you have probably watched spelling instruction strategies change - possibly more than once. One year, students may receive a weekly list of words to memorize. Another year, the emphasis shifts to word families and patterns. Later, teachers are encouraged to let students use "invented spelling" during writing. Then a new curriculum arrives with phoneme-grapheme mapping, heart words, morphology, syllable types, and a long

A Practical Guide for Busy Elementary Teachers Sight words are one of the most important building blocks for early reading success. These high frequency words appear often in text but are not always easily decoded using phonics rules. Because of that, students need repeated exposure and meaningful practice to build automatic recognition. The challenge for many teachers is not whether to teach sight words. It is how to fit the practice into an already packed school day. The go

Hey teacher friends! Let’s talk about something that’s been around forever in the elementary classroom: sight words. You know—the little words like the, said, come, and what that our students just have to recognize instantly if they’re ever going to build fluency. Lately, there’s been a lot of buzz around the Science of Reading, and some teachers wonder if sight word practice still belongs in a structured literacy classroom. The short answer? Yes—but maybe not in the way we’v