Over 20,000 teachers use my sight word fluency flashcards to help their students with sight word practice! When I saw that number, my jaw dropped! It’s amazing to be making such an impact in classrooms all over and I am truly honored to be part of so many classrooms. And, teachers are so creative! Over the years, I’ve seen many… Read More
Sight Words
Phonics-Based Sight Word Activities
For years, kids have been taught to memorize high-frequency sight words because they don’t follow phonics rules. I’m guilty of having done this, but changed my practices and learned how to really make sight words stick, using phonics. Now that we know that kids need to learn words by orthographically mapping them out (learn the sound/letter relationships to store them… Read More
How to Teach New Sight Words (and make them stick)
Avoid these 2 big mistakes made when teaching sight words. Read how to teach sight words with 3 key elements to make them stick! Sight words improve fluency and comprehension, especially with beginning readers in kindergarten and first grade. #sightwords #highfrequencywords #sightwordinstruction
Tips for Commonly-Confused Sight Words
Kids often mistake SAW for WAS and other similar words. Read these easy tips for how to teach commonly-confused sight words! Your kindergarten and first grade students will love these fun activities to help them master those hard-to-remember high-frequency words.
Differentiating Sight Word Instruction in 3 Easy Steps
Are you differentiating your sight word instruction EFFECTIVELY? You have a sight word list to cover for the year. You start with the first few words. Each week, you add new ones. After a couple of weeks, some students start to fall behind. Every week, that gap just gets wider and wider. You can’t slow down for the whole class,… Read More
Goal-Trackers: A System for Helping Students Set Goals
Give your students more ownership this year! Helping them set their own goals can be a powerful tool for improving academics, behavior, and effort. How can you Help Students Set Goals? Teaching students to set goals is a skill they will benefit from throughout their entire lives. Discuss the importance of setting goals and model setting one for yourself. It’s… Read More
Body-Spelling Sight Words
Multisensory Sight Word Practice High-frequency sight words are essential to gaining reading fluency. Want to know the best way to practice? Here are some key things to do to make sight words stick: In all of my years teaching and researching about sight word instruction, I’ve learned that when kids are engaged and using their bodies to learn, they retain… Read More
Word Wall. Not Wallpaper.
Ever read your students’ writing and see words that you’ve already covered misspelled? In fact, those words are on the word wall and students can easily look up to spell them correctly. So why don’t they?? This may be because often a word wall is just (dare I say it?) CLASS DECOR to kids. They don’t refer to it, or… Read More
5-Minute Sight Word Game
You finished a lesson early, now what?! I know, that very rarely happens. But, indulge me for a minute. So, you have an extra 5 minutes before you have to get ready for lunch/ music/ PE… Hmmm, what can you do? There’s not enough time to read a book or have kids write in a journal. So you pause. Harp starts… Read More
5 Ways to Teach Sight Words with Movement
Sight word fluency is so important, yet many kids struggle to build and retain a strong sight word vocabulary, despite a variety of approaches. Today, I want to share with you some really great tips on helping your students to master sight words! Have you tried incorporating movement into your sight word instruction? Movement is scientifically proven to be linked with… Read More