Sight Words & Winners!

Hiya'll! Before I share my weekly sight word "routines," I would like to congratulate Cindy Murray, who was the grand prize winner out of 1,493 entries in our "11 bloggers, 11 freebies" fall blog hop:

Cindy has won my Everything Autumn literacy center activities pack, along with 10 other fabulous products which you can read about HERE. CONGRATS, Cindy!!! And a huge thank-you to everyone who participated in our blog hop...and scooped up 11 fall freebies on the way!!!

Alrighty, now for some sight word fun!

Like I mentioned in this blog post, I will be teaching my darlings THREE sets of sight words this year (pre-primer, primer, and first grade). So, each week, I introduce anywhere between 3 and 5 sight words each week. I start by arrange the words in a "sight word sentence":

(Above shows 4 weeks of sight word sentences--one sentence each week...it's super crinkly since we've been constantly referring back to this page for 4 weeks now!)

We review these sentences throughout day whenever we have a spare moment. We read them forward. We read them backwards. We act them out. We search for letters and words. The sentences are, overall, just a great little tool to help the kiddies learn each word (especially when initially introduced). This chart will eventually hang in our reading center with other class-made big books. 

My kiddies are also *obsessed* with playing Sight Word Slap at any spare moment:

(I wrote "and" twice. It drives me absolutely NUTS!!!)

I keep adding our new sight words to this page every week. 

How we play: Each kiddie gets a turn as I call out a sight word and he/she has to first find and then "slap" the spoken word with a fly swatter. Simple and fun!

We keep track of the sight words learnt with our door decor; "Sight Word Celebration." We made a deal at the beginning of the year that for every 20 sight words learnt, we will have a little sight word celebration! I still want to add ribbons to some of the balloons:

I put our "Sight Word Celebration" on our door because, at the end of every day as the kiddies line up and leave the classroom one-by-one to pack up from home-time, I point to a balloon and each kid has to say the word before they leave. It is also right next to my Word Work 2 center, so the kiddies are constantly referencing the words throughout certain center activities.

I've mentioned my "Read It, Build It" filing cabinet once before on my classroom reveal:

I have been adding each week's new sight words to the cabinet for students to practice building their sight words with Alphamagnets. Right now, I am using this as an "I'm done, now what?" activity.

The front of the filing cabinet features an Alphamagnet version of our current sight word sentence:

Throughout each day of the week (whenever there's a spare minute), I will either rearrange the letters in one or all of the sight words and have students fix the mis-spelled words,

OR rearrange the word placement to focus more on sentence structure and deciding "what makes sense":

Next up, are our flash cards:

Each student has a set of sight word flash cards (which the have written themselves) that they keep in their individual book boxes (book boxes contain levelled books and guided reading books, which the kiddies read when they visit the reading center). Every Friday, we take a short moment to write our new sight words for that week on a card, and add them to our rings.

 Last but not least, you might have already read about of our Sight Word Wands:

Again, I add our 3 or 5 new sight word wands to the cup at the beginning of each week. The kiddies use the wands to search for sight words as they read. I really love love loovve these wands especially for my little guys who aren't confidently reading yet; rather than always just looking at the pictures of a book, it gives them more of a focus in hunting for all of the words they DO know and CAN read independently. It works wonders for their confidence!

And that about sums up our main "routine" when learning new sight words!

Now, I would LOVE to hear from YOU!

Comment below to share any tips, tricks, or activities that you use to help your kiddies learn and practice sight words....