Sight Words and Place Value!

 

I found this cute linky button floating around the blogosphere today and headed over to check it out. I am glad I did, because I found this lovely blog "Teacher to the Core".



  Teacher to the Core seems to be as wild about sight words as I am!   Sight Words are one of my favourite things to teach. "Arrggghh" I hear you say! I am very passionate about sight words actually being TAUGHT. I see and hear so many stories from fellow mothers, of children being given a list of words from the teacher to 'do' at home.   Too often, the words are not actually being taught all that well in class,and left for mum to cope with at home. I am all for homework review, but I also try to dedicate AT LEAST a mini-lesson or literacy centre/group to sight words each and every day.   I usually follow this rough plan in a kindergarten class as follows:   Monday - Introduce 6 new words + read them in context (modelled + independent read) Tuesday - Class Game + Literacy Group/Centre Game Wednesday - Literacy Group Game Thursday - Class Game + Literacy Group Game Friday - Final review of words + Possible assessment of last week's words   But this changes, depending on my stduents' needs and any set programs we are running in school.   I have my focus sight words on display at all times in the classroom, both on a weekly 'focus word' section of my front teaching area and also all the words we have covered through the year on a 'word wall'. I pull out the 6 focus words flashcards from a file I keep of all sight word flashcards, and have these very handy for quick drills through the day.   I try to expose the children to the words as often as possible through the week, but also take care to make sure they are really attending, or connecting with the word. I am constantly asking them to look at the word while they are saying it, even in games and activities. I think children are at risk of just going through the motions and are not making a visual memory of the word in their mind. Making lessons short, simple and focused (and frequent!) can help prevent this.   We started a 100 Sight Words series for From the Pond, and our VERY first product was the set of flashcards in this series. We now have quite a few resources in the series, and we sell the whole entire program in one bundle on TpT. The individual files can be found on our website. We chose the top 100 words that are used in the English langauge in all that we read, for our program.    

 

The whole premise of our program is that it is colour coded - and students can work through the colours as they learn more words. There are 20 words in each of the 5 levels. You can just talk to the studend about what 'colour' they are reading, rather than talk about 'levels'.

 

Here is a game you can play to revise the 100 words in our program, or you can use the idea to play with any set of words. Just choose 5 different colours to write your words on.

 

Here are our Flashcards Mega Pack, cut out and set out in their levels/colours. Just print the blackline file on thin coloured card. We used a font very similar to fonts used in early reading material for the sight words.

   

 

Insert corresponding coloured pieces into a dice with clear pockets. Students roll the die, and pick up a word of matching colour. If they can read the word, they keep the card until the end of play. Keep rolling and reading until all the cards have been allocated.

 

When students are playing games like this, I like to 'tell' the word if a students cannot read it. They look at me when I tell the word, look back to the word and repeat it while looking at the word. This is after all, what we are encouraging the students to do - attend to the print and try to practise reading the word. There is no point playing games like this if the same students miss out on participating when they have not got instant recall of the words.

 

 

 

You can download a template of the pieces I uses for my dice, by clicking on the image below.

 

 

Today, I also spent some time with my daughter making popstick 'bundles' to help her begin to understand place value, tens and ones. We used the mini-popsticks that we had in our craft cupboard. They are just too cute!

 

 

I wanted to play some games from my new packet:

 

 

We player "Let's Race" - building numbers and comparing quantities to win the race!

 

 

And "Make It"  - a simple game to practise building numbers and place value.

 

This has been on my desktop for about a week, and I was so happy to get it finished. I have had such wonderful feedback about our 'Puzzle Pastes' and requests for some with more difficult content, so here she is:

 

 

Are you not as IN-LOVE with Kimbery Geswein fonts as I am?! Love this one called 'What the Teacher Wants'. Schmick!

 

The puzzle paste set includes ten different worksheets, featuring a range of numbers from 10 to 50. Students have to match the numerals to the base ten pictures.



 

I hope your week is going well! I would love to know what you do for sight words, so link up!