Reading

The Importance of Sight Words

I highly doubt I have to convince you that teaching sight words is extremely important.

Did you know that the first 300 Fry Sight Words make up approximately 65% of all written material? Do I expect my students to sit down and memorize 300 sight words? Absolutely not. In reality, many of the sight words on the list can be stretched out phonetically, which greatly reduces the amount of sight words that have to be memorized.

A couple weeks ago, I posted about the Sight Word Bookmarks that I use. I received a lot of requests for this, and I finally got around to putting it all together for you.

I start off by assessing my students on their sight words to see which ones they know. Then, each student receives a bookmark with the list that they need to work on. I print these 2-sided on bright colored paper, and then I laminate them for durability. The students can keep these in their pencil box, a book they are reading, or on their desks. They can be pulled out at any time to practice.

I put these together into a file that includes all 220 Dolch sight words and the first 500 Fry sight words. The file also includes word lists, recording sheets, and certificates. You can click on the picture below to check it out.