Sight Word Song

Sing THOSE Sight Words!

I feel like over the last few years as a newbie teacher I've tried countless strategies to teach sight words.  This year I tried something completely different.  I placed ALL of our county required sight words on different colored index cards and placed in a pocket chart.  I made a up two songs, one for the first half of the words and a second for the rest.  I sang the words to the tune of "Yankee Doodle" and the last part to "Twinkle Twinkle".  I had little group of singers this year so I new they would love it!  There were rules to singing and chanting the chart.  They had to always be looking at the word being pointed to and if I stopped on a word, they also had to stop singing or chanting.  Sometimes I treated it like a game, I stopped to randomly select a word and call of students to see if they knew it.  

 Click on the image the watch!

The children LOVED this last year and often during their free time they would pick up the pointer and sing the words themselves once they memorized the tune.  They used it when they could not recall how to read or write the word.  By the middle of the year several of the students knew all 54 words. Many started reading 1st grade words and 16 out of 19 could read books that blew my mind! Yes at first they are dependent on the song to read the words, but when they see them over and over they quickly file it in their memory! I will continue to do this every year!

*IMPORTANT:  When testing DO NOT display the words in the same order as when they sing.  I also make sure there was not a chart anywhere in sight! :)

Word Wallet

So at target last year I bought 20 of these and I knew I wanted to have the children keep words inside them, but didn't really know how to go about making it work.  So after storing them for many months, I brought them out! I gave each child one in small group time and filled it with words that we have learned and also words to challenge them.  I wanted the words to be differentiated, but it is hard to do when there are 50 words our children have to know and they are all on different levels.  So in small group we played games with our sight words and letter cards to see which ones they need to work on. 

I taught the children how to know if they have learned a word or letter and also if they need more practice on it.  On the inside of the "word wallet" there is a smiley face and a sad face.  The words that they know and can name quickly without hesitation, can go into the smiley face section; they do not have to practice those as much. 
There is also a sad face section (not meant to be negative, but children seem to associate it well with words they don't know). The sad face side holds cards they are unsure about or have to take more than 3 seconds to name.  We discussed this in detail.  I assisted the children with filling their word wallets.  They did really well with filing their words into smiley or sad face.  I use the word wallets to test them on their words and it takes two seconds to note which words they know and do not know. Teaching the children how to identify their sad or smiley face words really makes my job a little easier and gives them ownership of their learning. I don't think I've had a class who cares so much!

So the kiddos think they're are soooo cool with their new word wallets!  They know they have to take them to word work or writing stations around the room.  They also keep them in their "travel bag" that hangs on the back of their chairs.  They just pull out their words to practice identifying and writing.  They have their table buddies check to see if they know the word. 
At the end of the week at small group or individual interview time, we'll pull out the words and see which ones we can move to the smiley side!

Word wallets are also awesome to use with dry erase markers!!!