Class Blog
October 21, 2017
This past week, the air has taken on a chill, and we can certainly tell that fall is in the air! Fall is a perfect time to get out with your child and take a trip to the pumpkin patch or apple orchard, ride up on the Blue Ridge and check out the beautiful scenery, and visit the many trunk or treats and Fall festivals taking place around our area. In this blog post, I’m going to talk a bit about the case for sight word instruction, and as a special treat at the end, show off some cute little pumpkins that your children made this past week.
The Case for Sight Word Instruction: A Heartfelt Stance from a Teacher and a Mom
This year, the Davidson County School System developed a list of 100 High Frequency Words (HFW) for Kindergarten students. That list was then divided out among the four quarters of the school year at 25 per quarter, with a goal of mastering all 100 sight words by the end of the school year. This list is much larger than previous sight word lists given by the county, but is in line with lists such as the Fry sight word lists for Kindergarten.
For years, we have known that rote memorization, like that which many of us experienced in our school days, is not truly an effective means of instruction. So the question is often asked, why are we teaching sight words when it is clearly a rote memorization skill? This is a great question! Sight words play an exponential role in beginning reading instruction for two main reasons. First, beginning readers have very few letter-sound correspondences in their schema (i.e., they only know a few letter sounds). By teaching sight words, words that will be identified by sight only and not by decoding (sounding out), it expands the number of words students can read more quickly. Second, true sight words are words that must be learned by sight because they do not follow typical phonetic patterns, and cannot be decoded. Think about words like “said”, “people”, and “some”. Because these words cannot be decoded, they must be taught as sight words. In teaching these sight words, we allow Kindergarteners (and other beginning readers) the ability to pick up reading more quickly by building recognition and automaticity with these words. Within just a few days time, a student can quickly pick up on patterned texts using picture supports, reading sentences like “I can see toys. I can see boats. I can see dolls.” Not only does this increase students’ reading acquisition rate, it also increases students’ self-esteem and positively reinforces for them that reading success can be attained. In an idyllic world, every child would quickly pick up on all of these sight words and beginning readers would take off at the speed of light into the wonderful world of reading! Except...its not quite so simple, nor idyllic...
We know from research from the National Institutes of Child Health and Development (NICHD) that only about 40% of the population learns to read relatively easily (5% easy, and 35% relatively easily). In contrast, about 40% find reading a challenge, and another 20% find it one of the most difficult tasks to be mastered. The great news is that researchers have estimated that 95% of the population can learn to read. But let’s take a step back, and consider the work of Maryanne Wolf, author of The Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain (2008). Just as the title suggests, her book is packed with information about the science behind learning to read. She makes a profound statement at the beginning of chapter 1:
We were never born to read. Human beings invented reading only a few thousand years ago. And with this invention, we rearranged the very organization of our brain, which in turn expanded the ways we were able to think, which altered the intellectual evolution of our species (p. 3).
Here’s another poignant remark that will make you stop and think:
Despite the fact that it took our ancestors about 2,000 years to develop an alphabetic code, children are regularly expected to crack this code in about 2,000 days (that is, by six or seven years of age), or they will run afoul of the whole educational structure—teachers, principals, family, and peers. If reading is not acquired on society’s schedule, these suddenly disinherited children will never feel the same about themselves. They will have learned they are different, and no one ever tells them that, evolutionarily, this might be for good reason (p. 222).
We simply cannot force our babies into little boxes and expect that they are all going to learn to do things at the same rate and speed. Every child develops differently, no matter if we are discussing academics or developmental skills. I will give you a perfect example from my own house. My oldest, Meredith was sitting up by four months, scooting (which we referred to as crabbing, because she loved to scoot sideways) by about seven months, and walking by 10 months. In stark contrast, my youngest, Adalyn did not sit up until nine months, didn’t crawl until 14 months, and didn’t walk until she was about 16 months. Meredith started talking intelligibly around 5-6 months, and Adalyn didn’t start until somewhere closer to two. Do I have concerns as a parent that she may struggle once she gets into school? Absolutely. But in my 10 years in the classroom (mind you, I’ve taught Kindergarten through 5th grade, including EC and ESL), I have seen every kid pick up skills in their own time. As a parent, we all want our children to succeed, both inside the classroom and out. We have to understand, though, that it only adds stress to our lives if we try to “keep up with the Joneses” per say. I prefer to think of child development as a continuum, where the developmental, academic, social, and other skills that are given a time frame are simply a suggestion. This doesn’t mean we ignore when our kids are struggling; it simply means that we give them the time they need to blossom. When they struggle, we put supports in place to help them meet their goals, and monitor progress towards that goal. We give them strategies to help them be successful, and don’t try to compare them with others who are achieving higher levels. Even the Guided Reading gurus, Fountas and Pinnell, take this stance.
So back to the question of sight words...we have 25 per quarter, 100 in all. The report card says that students should know 25 sight words by October 27 (the last day of first quarter). My child isn’t picking up on the sight words. Help! First, don’t worry about the grades. As I grade, I think back to that continuum, and think about that goal of 25 sight words (or 26 letters, or 13 sounds). Students who are able to consistently demonstrate these skills receive a “3”. Students who are inconsistent in applying these skills receive a “2”. A “2” is not a bad grade; it is where the average child will fall (for any skill). A “1” simply means that the student is struggling in this skill area, and we need to work together to intervene and close those gaps. A student who has a “1” in first quarter may take off and receive a “3” by second quarter, because s/he blossomed. We simply use the 3-2-1 grading system to describe where a student is on that continuum at this particular point in the year, so that we have data to reference back to how each student is progressing.
So...how can I help my child? Sight word acquisition for most comes through repeated exposures (sometimes 200 or more) through multiple modalities and multiple contexts (i.e., experience with the words in lots of different ways). For some students, sight words in isolation on a flash card may work well. For others, they may be able to recognize the word more easily in the context of a sentence, but struggle when given the flashcards. Both are fairly normal. As a result, it’s important to use a multi-sensory method of teaching sight words (and letters, sounds, numbers, shapes, etc.) so that students have repeated exposure with those different modalities. Every child learns differently (check out Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences for an interesting read). It is also important that students experience these words within the context of sentences and reading. As you read baggy books at night and come across these sight words, after reading, ask your child to point to sight words s/he knows. See if your child can identify them in the context of the sentence without prompting. As we assess in the classroom, we are looking for automaticity (can the child recognize it within about 3 seconds). However, we also look at whether or not we have seen the child demonstrate the skill within small group and whole group instruction. From early on, we are working on teaching students to read for meaning, thinking about what makes sense as we are reading. For this reason, students can often apply the sight words within the context of reading group or independent reading, but may struggle with reading them from a flashcard.
Let me elaborate a bit more on the sight word home practice. Each week, we send home a card with new sight words for the week. On Monday, typically, we assess whether or not students are able to read those sight words for the previous week. Any word that a student is not able to read with automaticity, I highlight to keep practicing. We do not go back and reassess previous weeks for two reasons: (1) it can be very time-consuming, and (2) we reassess periodically on all sight words throughout the quarter on a different form. Please feel free to check off those sight words on your child’s word card for previous weeks once you find that they are able to consistently identify that word within about 3 seconds. As you work on sight words at home, while using the multisensory methods, PLEASE do not feel like you have to work on all 25 words. One of my favorite multi-sensory methods (and my daughters’) is the wet-dry-try method from Handwriting Without Tears. (Our boards for the class came this week! YAY!) If we tried to do all 25 of those words in one setting my kids would HATE me (and “hate” is a strong word that is typically discouraged in my house, but we are talking serious gnashing of teeth)! Pick a few words, start with easier ones, and make it fun! If you try to do too much at once, your child will be miserable, you will be miserable, and everyone will be unhappy with me for ever bringing up the idea of doing all of this in the first place. Save your sanity...pick a few words, pick a single strategy, and work for 5-10 minutes max. If your child is getting frustrated, take a break and come back to it later. Same with letters, numbers, sounds, etc. J
As a teacher, I have questions from parents all the time worrying about their child’s achievement. I totally get it, because I do the same thing. I can’t promise you that I have all the answers. I can promise you that when I don’t have the answers, I will seek out others who may have the answers. I can also promise you that every day your child is in my classroom, I will take your child under my wing as one of my own and teach them with my whole heart and mind. I wholeheartedly believe in the quote in my email signature from Rita Pierson. Every child deserves a champion, and I refuse to give up on my kids, no matter who they are or what they are able to do.
Now...if you’ve made it this far in the post...time for some fun and happiness!
Happy Little Punkin’s
Mrs. Martinez took some time this week with the kids to make these adorable little pumpkins that make my heart super happy. The kids wanted to bring them home, but I begged them to let me hang them up in the classroom. Some of them took more convincing than others, but I promised them that I would send them with the newsletter this week and they agreed (albeit still reluctantly). Hope you enjoy!
