Rainbow Words
Our class is participating in an incentive activity to help the children learn to recognize high frequency words– the words that are most commonly read & written.
Your child is bringing home colorful sets of word flash cards. After you cut the cards apart, I recommend storing the words in a Ziploc baggie, so they don’t get lost. Once your child has mastered the alphabet, you may begin helping them learn the pink set of words. After the pink set has been mastered, please move on to red, then orange, yellow, green, teal, blue, purple and finally the two sets of white words. A few of the words are decodable, however most are not spelled as they sound or read as they appear.
Each child will be given a fox which will remain at school. When the child is able to read all of the pink words quickly (without sounding them out), they will move their fox to the pink mushroom in the sight word forest. Then once they know the red words, they’ll hop over to the red mushroom & so on. When a child reaches the end of the forest, they will receive a prize and a certificate. I will be monitoring their progress, so it is imperative that you teach them in the color order suggested. This is a very time consuming project, so we might not be able to work on this everyday at school.
Playing games with sight words is a good way to offer your child more exposure to these words. Some children remember a word after only a few exposures to it, while others might need dozens of exposures. There are children who need to see a word hundreds of times in order to remember it. All learners are different– no one is the same. For those children who learn to read the words quickly, we hope that you will take time to have your child practice spelling the words orally or writing them when someone calls them out. This helps tremendously when the children are trying to write sentences in class.
Learning sight words should be fun, not tedious work. Engage your child by turning sight word practice into a game. Some kids love seeing how many words they can accurately read in a minute– for those children, use a timer to create an extra challenge. For others, playing a game with their words is more fun. Exposure to high frequency words doesn’t have to mean boring drill work. Be creative!
Your child is bringing home colorful sets of word flash cards. After you cut the cards apart, I recommend storing the words in a Ziploc baggie, so they don’t get lost. Once your child has mastered the alphabet, you may begin helping them learn the pink set of words. After the pink set has been mastered, please move on to red, then orange, yellow, green, teal, blue, purple and finally the two sets of white words. A few of the words are decodable, however most are not spelled as they sound or read as they appear.
Each child will be given a fox which will remain at school. When the child is able to read all of the pink words quickly (without sounding them out), they will move their fox to the pink mushroom in the sight word forest. Then once they know the red words, they’ll hop over to the red mushroom & so on. When a child reaches the end of the forest, they will receive a prize and a certificate. I will be monitoring their progress, so it is imperative that you teach them in the color order suggested. This is a very time consuming project, so we might not be able to work on this everyday at school.
Playing games with sight words is a good way to offer your child more exposure to these words. Some children remember a word after only a few exposures to it, while others might need dozens of exposures. There are children who need to see a word hundreds of times in order to remember it. All learners are different– no one is the same. For those children who learn to read the words quickly, we hope that you will take time to have your child practice spelling the words orally or writing them when someone calls them out. This helps tremendously when the children are trying to write sentences in class.
Learning sight words should be fun, not tedious work. Engage your child by turning sight word practice into a game. Some kids love seeing how many words they can accurately read in a minute– for those children, use a timer to create an extra challenge. For others, playing a game with their words is more fun. Exposure to high frequency words doesn’t have to mean boring drill work. Be creative!
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Spelling Tests
Once students have learned to recognize all of the sight words in the above lists, they will begin learning how to spell them. We use spellingcity.com to keep track of this so that each child can move at his or her own pace and remain challenged. Students can print their list, take a spelling test or play games to learn to spell their words all on this site. Our spelling city link is https://www.spellingcity.com/scesk/