What Effect Does Teaching Sight Words Have on a Student's Reading Development?

Word recognition plays an important office in learning to read. Although not a substitute for the critical skill of being able to decode unfamiliar words (referred to as discussion identification), recognizing some words automatically, or on sight, contributes to reading effortlessly and with agreement (McArthur et al., 2015). Words that tin be recognized this way by a reader are known as sight words. Learning certain kinds of sight words enables children to devote their energy to decoding words that are more difficult.

What Are Sight Words?

There are two types of sight words. The first type includes decodable words that frequently occur in printed English (due east.g., "and," "like," "get"). These loftier frequency words can be read by sounding them out, but they appear then ofttimes in text that learning to read them on sight will increase children'due south reading fluency (Joseph, Nation, & Liversedge, 2013). Moreover, these words can provide a student admission to connected text in advance of learning the phonics principles otherwise necessary for decoding them (Ehri, 2014).

The other blazon of sight words cannot be decoded because they do non follow the typical letter of the alphabet-sound correspondences (due east.thou., "have," "in that location," "of"). These are irregular words and because they cannot be identified, they must exist recognized automatically.

What Sight Words Should Be Taught?

Several research-based lists of sight words are bachelor for teachers to use when planning instruction or for families to use when working with their children at home. One of the most popular lists is Edward Dolch's (1936) listing of 220 basic sight words. Commonly referred to as the Dolch words, this list was developed as an alternative to longer sight word lists of 500 or more words. To be included on the list, a discussion had to appear on all three popular discussion lists of the early on 1900s:

• The Child Study Committee of the International Kindergarten Marriage's (1928) list of 2,596 words
• The Gates (1926) list of vocabulary for principal grade children
• Wheeler and Howell'due south (1930) list of 453 words most frequently used in beginning readers published from 1922 to 1929.

The final Dolch list excluded all nouns, which are concrete and easily referenced in illustrations, and included an additional 27 words not found on the three lists mentioned above. Dolch cautioned that his list of words did not include all the sight words children might need to learn in the elementary grades, only the words represented the minimum that children should be able to read automatically.

Another popular list of sight words is Edward Fry's (2000) thousand Instant Words. Fry's list differs from Dolch's (1936) in a few central ways. Beginning, Fry's listing has been revised several times. What originally began equally a list of 1000 words (Fry, 1957) was condensed to a list of 300 words (Fry, 1980) and, most recently, reintroduced equally a modified listing of m words (Fry, 2000). In comparison, the Dolch words have non been updated since they were outset introduced. Second, the longer list compiled past Fry is broader in scope. Among the resources used to develop the Fry list were the Dolch words and The American Heritage Give-and-take Frequency Book (Carroll, Davies, & Richman, 1971). As a consequence, the Fry list includes nearly all of the Dolch Words, with 19 exceptions:

an	ate	telephone call	drinkable	eight	funny	goes	going	he	hither
injure	its	long	myself	own	round	she	thank	upwards

The other words contained on Fry's (2000) list stand for the virtually common words in the English linguistic communication organized in groups of 100. Fry suggested that his list of 1000 Instant Words be used as part of the comprehensive literacy didactics provided to beginning readers in elementary schoolhouse besides as struggling readers in center and high school.

How to Teach Sight Words

At present that you know about some of the validated sight word lists, there are several enquiry-based recommendations to think when teaching sight words (e.g., Ayala & O'Connor, 2013; January, Lovelace, Foster, & Ardoin, 2017). Lists ordered past frequency provide guidance for teachers and families in considering which generally are the highest priority for didactics. Even so, the words that children are near to encounter in a volume should be considered alongside the sight word lists. For young children, choose one or two sight words from the volume that appear in the first 100 on the listing. Older children may be able to learn v to seven sight words from the book at a fourth dimension, and those words should gradually be lower on the list of frequency. The following are additional tips for teaching sight words:

1. Introduce new sight words in isolation (i.eastward., the sight word by itself), but immediately follow this with repeated exposures to the aforementioned sight words in books and other text materials.
2. Do not innovate 2 sight words that are similar or easily dislocated at the aforementioned time. For instance, "will" and "well" should exist introduced in separate lessons every bit should "on" and "no."
3. Provide brief (i.e., less than ten minutes per session) just frequent sight give-and-take instruction, especially for get-go and struggling readers.
4. Offer students numerous opportunities to practice and receive immediate, specific feedback. For case, if a child reads the word "this" correctly, respond with positive feedback: "Aye! The word is this." If a kid read "this" incorrectly, answer with cosmetic feedback: "The word is this. Say the word this."

Immediately encountering the words in a volume provides an opportunity to practice reading them, merely building the ability to read them with automaticity, or effortlessly upon sight, will accept repeated exercise. If a kid is struggling to remember previously introduced sight words, proceed practicing with those before adding new sight words. Finally, information technology is important to recall that sight discussion instruction is simply one part of a comprehensive reading lesson and must be accompanied past education in phonics (Ehri, 2014).

Reading Racetrack: I Research-Based Sight Word Strategy

I research-based sight discussion activity to use equally part of sight discussion instruction is the reading racetrack (Rinaldi, Sells, & McLaughlin, 1997; Sullivan, Konrad, Joseph, & Luu, 2013). Although implemented one-on-1 in the Sullivan et al. report, the reading racetrack strategy has been modified hither (meet Supplemental Materials for Teachers below to admission this resource) for implementation in peer pairs and modest groups. Initially, a set of sight words is taught with feedback, and then the racetrack activity provides students do with the sight words to build automaticity. Children read as many of the sight words as they can in 1 infinitesimal. The teacher and so forms small-scale groups of students who made similar errors, and provides straight instruction to each group. Children then practice reading the sight words again and graph their results.

Part of the Bigger Reading Picture

Given the demand to recognize high frequency and irregular words automatically, sight word teaching remains one component of a comprehensive literacy program for early readers and, for older students experiencing reading difficulties, a office of reading intervention. To prevent students from becoming reliant on the ineffective practice of memorizing lists of words, the instruction should be delivered in small doses (i.eastward., less than ten minutes) and occur alongside systematic phonics education. The sight words themselves should be drawn from research-based lists and be applied immediately to reading connected text. It is important to remember that sight discussion drills are not the route to skilled reading power. Rather, virtually words become sight words when a reader is able to efficiently process the sound-symbol correspondences of the printed forms (Ehri, 2014). When implementing effective reading instruction, only a small set up of words need exist taught as sight words. Reading near words should exist an effortless act.

Supplemental Materials for Teachers

Reading Racetrack Sight Word Activity

Teach sight word recognition using this exercise that involves multiple rounds of pedagogy and practice.

References

Ayala, S. M., & O'Connor, R. (2013). The effects of video cocky‐modeling on the decoding skills of children at adventure for reading disabilities. Learning Disabilities Research & Do, 28, 142-154. doi:ten.1111/ldrp.12012

Carroll, J. B., Davies, P., & Richman, B. (1971). The American Heritage word frequency volume. New York, NY: American Heritage Publishing Co.

Child Study Commission of the International Kindergarten Union. (1928). A study of the vocabulary of children earlier entering the offset course. Washington: International Kindergarten Union.

Dolch, E. W. (1936). A basic sight vocabulary. The Simple School Journal, 36, 456-460. doi:x.1086/457353

Ehri, L. C. (2014). Orthographic mapping in the acquisition of sight discussion reading, spelling memory, and vocabulary learning. Scientific Studies of Reading, xviii, 5-21. doi:ten.1080/10888438.2013.819356

Fry, Due east. (1957). Developing a give-and-take list for remedial reading. Elementary English, 34, 456-458. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/41384648

Fry, Eastward. (1980). The new instant discussion list. The Reading Teacher, 34, 284-289. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/20195230

Fry, E. (2000). 1000 instant words: The near common words for teaching reading, writing, and spelling. Westminster, CA: Instructor Created Resources.

Gates, A. I. (1926). A reading vocabulary for the chief grades. New York, NY: Teachers Higher, Columbia University.

Jan, S. A. A., Lovelace, G. Due east., Foster, T. E., & Ardoin, South. P. (2017). A comparison of two flashcard interventions for instruction sight words to early readers. Journal of Behavioral Education, 26, 151-168. doi:x.1007/s10864-016-9263-two

Joseph, H. L., Nation, Thou., & Liversedge, S. P. (2013). Using center movements to investigate word frequency effects in children's judgement reading.School Psychology Review,42, 207-222. doi:10.1016/j.visres.2015.05.008

McArthur, G., Castles, A., Kohnen, Due south., Larsen, L., Jones, Thousand., Anandakumar, T., & Banales, E. (2015). Sight give-and-take and phonics training in children with dyslexia. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 48, 391-407. doi:10.1177/0022219413504996

Rinaldi, L., Sells, D., & McLaughlin, T. F. (1997). The effect of reading racetracks on the sight word acquisition and fluency of uncomplicated students. Journal of Behavioral Education, seven, 219-233. doi:10.1023/A:1022845209417

Sullivan, K., Konrad, M., Joseph, L. One thousand., & Luu, K. C. (2013). A comparison of 2 sight discussion reading fluency drill formats. Preventing School Failure: Alternative Education for Children and Youth, 57, 102-110. doi:10.1080/1045988x.2012.674575

Wheeler, H. Eastward., & Howell, E. A. (1930). A first grade vocabulary study. The Elementary School Periodical, 31, 52-60. doi:10.1086/456516

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