There are several buzzwords that a person who is new to teaching as a professional teacher, or a home teacher ( parent, maybe) will encounter and have to get used to.
They might seem quite overwhelming at times, but they are very necessary, especially when teaching little kids.
Many of these concepts do ring a bell, but you just may not be familiar with them up to the point of knowing for sure what they are really about or how to use them.
Sight words are one of the many concepts associated with teaching kids how to read and comprehend. In fact, sight words play a vital role in the developing stages of a child learning to read.
There are several definitions of sight words, but they all actually describe the concept.
In reading, sight words are a common term with different meanings.
When used in early reading instructions, it can refer to words that keep reoccurring on almost every paragraph, or page – there are about a hundred of them.
These words include “the, me, who, their, does, be, were,” just to mention a few.
Another definition of sight words is – words that a reader automatically recognizes with little or no visual or sound cues.
What this means is that you do not have to spell out the words in your mind before knowing what they are, unlike words that you get to see often.
Sight words make up about 60 percent of the majority of reading tasks.
In addition to sight words being frequently used in text, many of them are silent or cannot be sounded out.
However, children are taught to focus on the words and absorbing them by sight without actually sounding them out.
This may not be sufficient in teaching kids how to read as the sound component is essential when teaching them at that early stage.
Functions of Sight Words
Sight words are mostly instrumental in teaching children how to read.
This approach can be called the whole language approach. Kids who are visual learner benefit from sight words – kids with a learning disability like dyslexia show remarkable progress with sight words.
Since many sight words cannot be sounded out, the whole language approach encourages kids to comprehend words by recognition without the assistance of any sort of phonics.
Importance of Sight Words
Teaching sight words at the beginning of elementary school is very important because these words usually form the foundation or the core words that most kids will encounter in their reading materials.
Teaching a kid to master sight words at an early age will give him the ability to read most of the reading materials that he is asked to read.
It is an important skill that will help the child’s comprehension and intelligence.
Their chances of encountering reading problems later in their adult life are much lower.
There are several activities that one can engage a child in order to teach them sight words. “Bingo” and “Hangman” and the use of flashcards are some of the tools that both parents and teachers can use to teach sight words to kids.
Parents and teachers can get word lists and sight word resources on the internet, a simple Google search can be helpful. There are websites that provide a list of sight words by grade level, as well as flashcards, and many more.