So my son is looking school down the barrel (oh my how did we get here so fast?!?) and one thing the teachers sent out during lockdown was sight words. I’m not sure what planet I’ve been on, but I haven’t thought to spent any time on sight words – I was focused on the alphabet, for starters!! haha. So I did a little digging and this is what I found out about sight words.

Sight words:

*Sight words build confidence. Kids see words they know and feel positive about their ability to learn to read.

*Sight words make it easier for kids to learn harder words, as they already know some chunks within bigger words.

*Sight words help kids work out the meaning of a sentence. They are COMMON (one source says they make up 50% of kids reading material!). They are often particles, conjunctions or prepositions, and knowing them helps the child understand what is happening in the sentence.

*Knowing sight words reduces the fatigue of learning something new.

*Some sight words are phonetically irregular, which means they don’t sound like their ‘should’ sound – and therefore it will be easier for the child to learn and memorise them one at a time.

SO. All in all, I decided to spend more time helping my son learn his first set of sight words!! Just to help him feel like he’s on the front foot on the first day of school – hopefully it will be a strong start for him to give him some confidence.

I put together some sight word treasure hunts – my kids love these! In the classroom you hide the picture cards all around the class, and they look for the matching words and copy them down in the space. At home, I hide the picture cards with the sight words all around the place, and they have to run and find a word when I call it out. They get a wee bit competitive!! But it is lots of fun, and they are learning to boot 🙂 These are in my Tea4Teacher TPT store!

And of course you can use the cards for other games such as a memory challenge (Give them 5 cards to look at, then take them away and see how many they can remember and tell you), a memory match game (place cards face-down and take turns trying to match pairs), and just a basic treasure hunt (spice it up by making them put them into alphabetical order as they bring them back).

Don’t forget I also have BOOM Cards with the same sets of words, so if you want to reinforce their learning with a digital game, check them out in my Boom Learning Store🙂

Happy learning! All the best from Anna @ Tea4Teacher! 🙂

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