The site is subscription-based, but they offer a 30-day free trial.Ĭhoose the Matching Sight Words In this game students identify which two sight words are the same. The last three games I found come from IXL, a website that offers standards-based personalized learning for students in all subject areas.

Sight Word Smash is a super fun game from Room Recess where students listen to a sight word read aloud, find it and then “smash” it by clicking it with a mouse or tapping it on a touch screen. You can find directions to the game here in this YouTube video. Sight word Bingo A great sight word bingo that kids can access on ABCya. While these apps are great, I know not everyone has access to tablets in their classroom, so today I am excited to share a list of 5 Online Games for Sight Word Practice (games that can be accessed on a desktop or laptop computer), as well as my own activities that offer a more hands-on approach to learning sight words.

In earlier posts I have shared the 5 Best Apps for Teaching Sight Words and The 7 Best Phonics Apps. To keep things fresh and engaging it’s important we provide them with a range of sight word activities that offer different ways to work with the words. Students will spend a lot of time working on word recognition. Once students have received your direction instruction (“ I do“) and had plenty of opportunities to practice their heart words with you (“ We do“), they need time to practice and apply these skills on their own (“ You do“). The irregular part of the word is the part they must “learn by heart”, thus the name Heart Words. You explicitly teach them the sounds that are irregular in the word. The Heart Word Method requires students to use their phoneme knowledge to map the regular part of the words. Instead, integrate irregularly spelled, high-frequency words into your phonics lessons using the Heart Word Method. This means you must stop expecting students to learn sight words through flashcards and rote memorization. The Science of Reading tells us that effective instruction follows the “ I do, We do, You do” model. What is the best way to teach sight words? * It should be noted that while technically there is a difference between sight words and high frequency words (high frequency words are the most commonly occurring words in print and sight words are any word a student can read “at first sight”), when I refer to “sight words” I am referring to the words in the High Frequency Dolch Sight Words list. Secondly, knowing sight words is a huge confidence booster for students! Strong sight word knowledge allows them to understand the majority of the text, even when their decoding skills are still developing. Sight word practice is so important for young readers! For one, it allows them to free up cognitive resources so they can focus on the tougher words that require strong decoding skills. Words that can be recognized this way are known as sight words. While there are many skills and strategies we use to do so, one that gets a lot of time and attention is word recognition.Īlthough not a substitute for the ability to decode (also important!), the ability to recognize some words automatically, or on sight, contributes to reading effortlessly and with understanding. Teaching students to read is one of the most important (and best!) responsibilities we have as teachers. Each sight word game offers plenty of word recognition activities perfect for beginning readers. Students will love these free online sight word games.

Sight words for 1st grade games