•    Play the Pirate and Treasure game: make paper or card ‘gold coins’ with the words on and put them in a special ‘treasure chest’. Take one coin out and put it so the child can see it. If they read and say the word out loud correctly, they win the coin and add it to their pile of treasure. If not, the parent or person playing the game wins the coin back, puts it back into the treasure chest (saying the word aloud) and chooses another coin to put on the table.
•    Put large cards with the words written on them on the floor. You have to throw a pebble or counter or whatever you can find to land on one of the words. If it lands on one you can read the word out loud and win the card. Take it in turns and see who wins the most cards.
•    Make sight words bingo or lotto games.
•    Write sight words on large pieces of pasta such as macaroni with a permanent marker. Put them in a pan and your child has to scoop one out with a spoon and read it. If they can, they put it in their dish and if not they put it back in the pan for another time.
•    Print out or write the sight words in a large font and in outline. The children can make play dough or plasticine ‘snakes’ to go over the letters to write the word in dough.
•    Make a sheet with various shapes and a sight word written inside each shape. Make sure you write each sight word more than once. The children have to colour the matching sight words the same colour.

Time for some activities with sight words and sight words lists so that you get an idea of how you can use them. A few games today and more to follow in the next post. Remember that the sight words are a hugely important part when you are helping to teach your child to read so enjoy using them with your children.

Remember to only play with two or three
unfamiliar words at a time in order to reduce the frustration level!

• Make cards with the sight words on, with two of each word and play Snap. Start with just two or three unfamiliar words and add to them when these are memorised. Remember to say the word out loud when you put the card down.
• With the same cards, play Memo, or Memory game where you place cards upside down so you can’t see them and try to find the pairs of words, saying the words as you turn them over.
• Starfall has a good online sight word memo game here http://www.starfall.com/n/matching/sight-words/load.htm
• Play Hangman using sight words, pointing out how many letters are in the word. You can also look at if it has tall or short letters in it, instead of just drawing a line for each letter, draw a box which needs to be the correct size for the letter (a tall box for l, t, d etc.; a box which descends downwards for g, j etc., a small box for a, c, e etc.)

Remember to pick up a great set of Key Words Flash Cards Here

A Starting Point For Learning Sight Words

Sight word lists are important when you start to teach your child to read. They give you, as the “teacher”, a good idea  of the main words your child needs to learn as sight words and also give you an idea of the sight word flashcards you can look for to buy, make or download to work with your child.

There are many sight word lists including the Dolch sight words (used primarily in the States) and also the lists published by the Department of Education in the UK. The list below is a good starting point for teaching your child to read sight words because it has the hundred most common words used in children’s books. Knowing these words, along with being able to read phonetically spelled words using phonics, will help to make your child’s reading more fluent, helping them to enjoy what they are reading more.

The first 100 most important sight words according to the UK government’s Letters and Sounds document are the following:

1. the

2. and

3. a

4. to

5. said

6. in

7. he

8. I

9. of

10. it

11. was

12. you

13. they

14. on

15. she

16. is

17. for

18. at

19. his

20. but

21. that

22. with

23. all

24. we

25. can

26. are

27. up

28. had

29. my

30. her

31. what

32. there

33. out

34. this

35. have

36. went

37. be

38. like

39. some

40. so

41. not

42. then

43. were

44. go

45. little

46. as

47. no

48. mum

49. one

50. them

51. do

52. me

53. down

54. dad

55. big

56. when

57. it’s

58. see

59. looked

60. very

61. look

62. don’t

63. come

64. will

65. into

66. back

67. from

68. children

69. him

70. Mr

71. get

72. just

73. now

74. came

75. oh

76. about

77. got

78. their

79. people

80. your

81. put

82. could

83. house

84. old

85. too

86. by

87. day

88. made

89. time

90. I’m

91. if

92. help

93. Mrs

94. called

95. here

96. off

97. asked

98. saw

99. make

100. an

Sorry to repeat, but this bit is important! Knowing these words as sight words will make children a lot more fluent and confident in their reading. When you combine these words with a knowledge of phonics, then their reading fluency will increase and their comprehension and enjoyment of reading will also increase accordingly.

If you need a pack of sight words flash cards then click below to get started.

Key Words Flash Cards: Key Words Flash Cards (Key Words Reading Scheme)

US Sight Words Flash Cards

Sight words (also known as high-frequency words or Dolch sight words) are words which we can read directly on seeing them, for which we don’t need to look at the letter sounds to blend them in order to read the word.

There are two main reasons why it is ‘useful’ to have a range of sight words: the first is that there are a lot of words in English (including very common ones such as ‘the’, ‘was’…) that cannot be read by blending the letters together as they are not spelled phonetically.

The second reason is that knowing sight words, even ones which can be read or decoded using phonics, makes reading a lot more fluent. One way to ‘acquire’ sight words is frequent reading and pointing them out – eventually children may remember them. But if you do want to speed up the process, or if your child isn’t remembering them and needs help, there are various games and activities you can play to help them.

More to come with the sight words list and sight words activities