Special Education

Teaching Students with Learning and Behavioural Differences
A Resource Guide for Teachers

Appendix 2: Sight Words

Sight words are words that are instantly recognized in print, The reader does not need to sound them out or use context clues to read sight words. The more sight words a student learns, the less cumbersome the reading process becomes. As the bank of sight words increases, the student can concentrate more on the message of the printed passage and less on the decoding process. Competent readers are able to sight read most words, relying on decoding skills for only rare and new vocabulary.

Key Vocabulary (See Appendix 1) is one way to expand an emergent reader's sight vocabulary. Other techniques that can increase a child's sight vocabulary include:

  1. Labelling all objects in the classroom and using these labels in literacy instruction.
  2. Asking students to brainstorm words that are related to thematic units and using these words in literacy instruction.
  3. Teaching word families (see page 27) so that once a student can identify one word in a given family, the rest of the family is easy to read. For example, could. would and should.
  4. Asking a cross-age or peer helper to print a sentence or story dictated by the child and then asking the child to read it back.
  5. Building classroom routines around commonly occurring words such as days, months, subjects, and themes so that these words become sight vocabulary.
  6. Sentence Frames: Framing a sentence involves using cupped hands or a cardboard frame to bring the students' attention to specific parts of a written text. The basic procedure is:
    • Select a passage or chant that is familiar to the students.
    • Print the passage on chart paper or on the blackboard.
    • Read the entire passage aloud, using a pointer to assist students in tracking.
    • Frame specific lines and ask students to read back.