Our sight word list is now up in our shop.
Our sight word list follows the Reading Elephant decodable book series. The list also comes with an assessment so you can determine what sight words your student needs to learn.
Enter our shop for our sight word list and assessment.
Reading Elephant offers 120+ downloadable decodable books for K-1.
What are sight words?
Sight words break the phonetic code in some way. Unfortunately, many sight word lists include words that are completely phonetic like play and gave. Real sight words have at least one irregular component. Play and gave are not true sight words because they are totally phonetic.
In our list, we only include words that break the phonetic code in some way (with the exception of little).
Some Reading Elephant sample sight words include…
In our sight word list and assessment, we include the most common sight words. Here are the sight words in the Reading Elephant short vowel series…
the, to, a, are, said, was, from, they, you, have, there, again, your, some, water, who, what, one, would, come, could
Kindergartners will notice that not all words are phonetic. It’s best to explicitly tell your kindergartner that some words don’t strictly follow the phonetic code.
Beginners see they can’t totally sound out words like the and would. You can explain that these words require a sound tweak. As an instructor, you can explicitly teach the child to identify the sounds he knows in sight words. Then, you can teach your student to find the sound tweak.
For more in-depth instructions on how to teach sight words, check out our sight word list and assessment; it also includes sight word teaching strategies.
For our complete sight word list and assessment, enter our shop.
Should you teach sight words?
There’s some debate on how sight words should be included in structured phonics lessons. Should they be included at all? It’s likely your spending too much time on sight words. Kids need to learn phonics sounds one at a time. After extensive phonics practice with decodable books, kids can begin to sound out sight words and identify the sound tweak on their own.
However, beginners may need help with sight words. They certainly need them in the very beginning to get through their first stories. They also need to learn to spell sight words. However, make sure you focus on explicit, systematic phonics lessons or structured literacy.
For our complete sight word list and assessment, enter our shop.
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