This week children at Memorial School celebrated Read Across America in honor of our beloved Dr. Seuss. The children started their week with a kick -off assembly, where they learned facts about Dr. Seuss and his books, sang songs and said the Reader’s Oath. Throughout the week the children read Dr. Seuss books and had community guest readers come into their classes!
Children wore crazy socks on Thursday and were greeted by the Cat in the Hat as they came into school on Friday! Click here to see the Reader's Oath One of the most effective and powerful reading tools that can help a child succeed at beginning reading is to develop a strong sight word recognition, otherwise known as “trick words” at Memorial! When a child is able to grasp and identify sight words he is well on his way to becoming a fluent reader. The most frequently used and repeated words in the English language are known as sight words. This list of words includes the, a, is, of, to, in, and, I, you, and that. Sight words are critical to reading not only because they are used so frequently, but because many of them cannot easily be sounded out or illustrated. Imagine what reading would be like if you tried to sound out the word “wants” every time you encountered it in your reading. You could not use the pictures accompanying a text to help you decipher this word because it cannot be illustrated. Using phonics skills or picture clues for words like these is fruitless for readers, especially those who are in the early stages of developing their decoding skills. Because sight words make up the majority of words in early reading text, it is important that readers be able to recognize these words on sight (hence the term “sight words”). When a reader masters sight words he/she is able to understand a majority of the words in a particular text. By eliminating the need to decode these words, the reader is able to focus on those that are more challenging and less familiar. At Memorial School trick words are introduced in our Fundations program and reinforced in authentic text and word work activities. By the end of kindergarten students will master reading 41 trick words. In Grade 1, children will read and write 101 trick words by the end of the year. How Can You Support Your Child in learning Sight Words? I have put together a variety of resources that you can use to help your child with sight word recognition. Below is a link to the list of " trick words" / sight words for Kindergarten and Grade 1. Kindergarten Trick Words First Grade Trick Word List Here is a link to activities to help your child learn sight words. Sight Word Activities Here is a link to free online games that can help a child develop sight word recognition. Recommended for grades pre-k- 3. free sight word online games Popular children's books with a high percentage of sight words is a great way to get practice in recognizing these types of words quickly. Sight words comprise between 60 and 85 percent of the text found in the typical children's book. You can help reinforce his/her knowledge by picking up one or more of the following titles to add to his/ her library:
information gathered from the following sites/ authors: Dana Hinders of Love to Know.com www.k12reader.com |
AuthorLaura G. Singer, ArchivesCategories |