A fun way to teach kids about Sight Words!

My little guy learns a lot if you inject some silly, nonsense humor (sometimes kid-friendly toilet humor).  So, I have improvised something to make him memorize sight words easily!

What are sight words?

Words recognised immediately by the reader without his having to go through the process of breaking them into constituent parts. 

Words such as The, Little, Please, Blue etc. are some words that cannot be sounded out.  So, teaching sight words become very important.  You can check the complete list of the Dolch Sight Words here (http://gemini.es.brevard.k12.fl.us/sheppard/reading/dolch.html).

Anyway, I am not quite a cartoonist myself, but I made a simple way to make sight words much easier to remember than just memorizing the actual words like these below (These are actually just plain sheets of paper cutouts with handwritten words of most common sight words that I want to teach my son).

I would show these words initially, then one by one flip it and show the story of the word at the back.  

 and made to these (These drawings are drawn at the back of each sight word to look like actual flash cards - yes, no printing needed).  I will be uploading the flashcard I have made with the sight words for download soon on my blog.

These are the sketch drawings I made on each word.  Just make it simple drawings, then mark the letters with a dark colored pen for emphasis.

At the back of each sight word, you might be wondering what those things are and how were they created.  Well, they are simple stick drawings that I have placed on each letter to tell a story about the word.

ex. the word LITTLE.  The story would go like this: Look at the LITTLE (empahisis on this word) i and e, they are too LITTLE unlike L's and the T's!

Example, the word Little.  We have come up with a simple story about Little.  The giant twin L's and T's looks at Little i and e!  I would tell the story like this, "The word is Little! Look at the LITTLE (empahisis on this word) i and e, they are too LITTLE unlike L's and the T's!"

Some other sight words we practiced:

There! There goes the ball!

"Can - I can Read! (or look, N looks like a can) 

I have read that this kind of teaching sticks like velcro to the brain.  The process of being able to use the Left Brain (thru words/letter) then actually transferring the info to the right brain (thru interesting visuals) is very good memorization technique.  The brain processes this info better and gets them attached for easier future retrieval.  The same way we remember a brand by its icon (ex. the Golden Arches for McDonald's, or the simple check with Nike).

This has helped my son very much.  With this, he has memorized all 13 sight words in just one sitting and are doing more.  We didn't even bother sounding them out or even explaining the silent e or whatever.

There's one product that is really nice that you can buy online that is similar to this at Dianne Kraft: http://stores.diannecraft.org/Detail.bok?no=54

I love this method!  Try this and let me know if this has helped you in your teaching journey!