As a kindergarten teacher, each year I would send home an anonymous guardian survey. (Glutton for punishment? Perhaps) Many years ago I had a parent say something along the lines of this: My son and I are both confused by sight words. It seems like some can be sounded out, some can't and you send them home on the same list. So, I don't know what to tell him to do when he sees one in a book. It is frustrating for both of us and as a result he doesn't like reading at home.
Not to be dramatic, but since I tend to be dramatic, it felt like a knife in my heart and I would like to welcome you to my internal dialogue upon reading this feedback!
"Wait! What? Yes, that's true! It's confusing! Are all my students confused? I am a horrible teacher! Why haven't I thought more deeply about this? This parent is more reflective than me. Maybe I should teach yoga full time. Teaching is so hard. Why would I teach can and they the same way? Seriously? Reading at home was frustrating for him...I want him to love to read." And on...and on...and on. I know you get it. When that negative self talk is so loud you can't shut it out. After a sufficient pity party, I decided to learn more about these elusive "sight words."
Thankfully, how to teach these words has been throughly studied and the research is making it's way into the classroom. But first, let's explore what is a sight word? Some times when I hear the term "sight word" used, I am reminded of the scene in the classic movie The Princess Bride when Vizzini repeatedly describes events as "inconceivable." To which Indigo replies, "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
Before we dive into how to teach these words, lets be sure that you think it means what I think it means.
A sight word is any word that can be immediate recognized by sight regardless of its regular or irregular spelling. The term sight vocabulary (or orthographic lexicon if we are feeling fancy) is a person's bank of words that can be effortlessly recognized.
A high frequency word (HFW) is often what teachers mean when we say sight word, but the distinction is useful. High frequency words are simply those that occur most often in English texts. Dolch and Fry and are the two most common lists of these words.
Within the high frequency word category are both regular and irregular words. Regular high frequency words are those that follow a predictable phoneme-grapheme (sound-symbol) relationship or pattern. Words such as can, in, and it fit this category.
Irregular high frequency words are words that again, are highly common, but do not follow the predicable phoneme-grapheme patterns. Of, was, are and they reside in this category and as we all know, these words are troublesome for budding readers and writers.
How to Teach High Frequency Words
Instead of teaching students to memorize words as unanalyzed wholes, we can support students in analyzing the sound structure of words and align those sounds with letter sequences. Through this process called orthographic mapping, these irregular high frequency words become sight words (Kilpatrick, 2015),
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| This definition is from Essentials for Assessing, Preventing, and Overcoming Reading Difficulties by David A. Kilpatrick (page 81). |
I attended the Plain Talk conference in New Orlean this past week and was honored to hear Dr. Kilpatrick present. He shared a wealth of research, theories and background in support of orthographic mapping. We do not learn these HFWs as units or by sight or the same way we memorize letter names. Just when I thought my brain would explode, he demonstrated how to orthographically map the word said. And guess what? It took about 2 minutes and was quite straightforward! So here is basically how it went.
In the following example:
T stands for teacher
Ss stands for students
A letter between slash marks means the sound a letter represents, not the letter name. For example, /m/ means saying mmmm not the name of the letter M.
The teacher says the word (notice I did NOT say shows the word)
T: "Today we are going to learn the high frequency word said. This word is important to us because we will use this word when we read and write. The word is said. What's the word?" (Kilpatrick did not state an objective, but it's a good practice so I threw it in.)
Ss: "said "
T: "Let's say the individual sounds in said."
Ss: "/s/ /e/ /d/"
T: "How many sounds did we hear?"
Ss: "3"
T: Writes a box for each sound (Some Ts like to have printed Elkonin boxes ready to go. I am a minimalist so I write boxes on a white board.)
T: "What was the first sound in said?"
Ss: "/s/"
T: "What letter do you think represents that sound?"
Ss: "The letter S"
T: "Yes, in the word said, the /s/ is represented by the letter S." Teacher writes an s in the first box.
T "What is the ending* sound in said?"
Ss: "/d/"
T "What letter represents that sound?"
Ss: "The letter D"
T: "Yes the /d/ sound is represented by the letter D." Teacher writes a d in the last box.
*In chapter 6 of Kilpatrick's book Equipped for Reading Success, he suggests mapping out of order. He states, "If you do the analysis in order, you remove some of the phoneme analysis that will assist in the mapping process." (page 59)
T: "What is the middle sound or the vowel sound in said?"
Ss: "/e/"
T: "What letter do you think represents the /e/ sound?"
Ss: "The letter E"
T: "It sounds like it would be the letter E, but in the word said the /e/ sound is written ai." Teacher writes ai in the middle box.
T: "This word is irregular by one sound." Teacher writes the word said on the board.
Practice together saying, "said, s-a-i-d" a few times. At this point the word can be added to a word wall, sound wall, or flash card bank for frequent review.
Many of us have a name for these irregular words such as "outlaw words," "red words," "heart words," "rule breakers" and so on. I have used the first one, but now i think it would be even better if part of the analysis was to simply say, "This word is irregular by one sound."
Here is why this important: about half of all English words can be spelled correctly by following the predicable phoneme-grapheme rules. An additional 36% are irregular by only one speech sound (usually a vowel). We often present writing and reading in English to our students as some sort of outlandish system when in reality only about 4% of printed words are truly irregular (LETRS, Unit 3 - Session 2). The HFWs one and of are in this 4% of words and as we introduce these words early, it often sends the incorrect message that words are less predictable than they realistically are.
So there it is! This example is an irregular HFW but all words go through this same mental storage process in order to be automatically recognized upon sight. Through orthographic mapping all words can be sight words when they grow up!
Once these words have been mapped, retrieval practice (the process of deliberately recalling information) will solidify these words in long term memory. Here are a few ways to help these words stick.
Additional Practice Ideas for High Frequency Words
Password - When my little monkeys came in the door every day they had to whisper the password in my ear. At the beginning of the year the password was a letter and then shifted to a HFW. It was so fun to hear the kids talking about words before they even came in the door. Talk about bell to bell learning! This routine also reminded me every day to kneel down, look each kiddo in the eye and welcome them to school. For that reason, I did not have the students tell each other the password. I kept this one for myself.
Find in connected text and writing practice - What do you do with all the predictable text floating around your classroom? Use for a HFW search! The tongue depressor in the image below has googly eyes glued to it. I had a whole bucket of these, some with 2 eyes and some with one big eye. I used them often to motivate students to practice one to one correspondence as they read, point to a phonics element or text feature. The kids LOVE these!
I Spy with my Googly Eye:
(1) Look for the HFW in connected text and "say, spell, say" the word when it is found.
(2) "Show that you see it!" (by using the stick as a place holder)
(3) Walk to the board and write the word.
Sentence Dictation - This one is my favorites and has huge benefits for students. I had the little humans write the HFW three times saying the name of each letter as they wrote. Then they practiced orally sharing sentences that use the word with a talking partner. Next, I chose a short sentence and dictated it to them. This is an ideal time to reinforce temporary spelling of unknown words, how to use the word wall/sound wall and sentence structure elements such as beginning with a capital letter, using finger spaces and ending with punctuation.
If you want to deepen your orthographic mapping knowledge, Kilpatrick's work is the way to go. When my team told him how his work is changing our instruction, he so respectfully said, "It is the work of Linnea Ehri, I am just spreading the word." His comment made me an even bigger fan! And I promise if you ever meet him, your face take on a similarly ridiculous, overly excited expression just like mine!
