Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Elementary School Sight words vs Phonics

A mom told me the other day that her child had to learn 65 sight words in kindergarten. What is this all about?

I kind of feel like my school didn't try to teach us to read until 1st grade and when we learned to read, I am certain we learned to sound out words, not memorize what they look like.

Does anyone know about this or have any idea of the usefulness of sight words vs. phonics? I am planning to homeschool, so I am very interested in this.

I'm no expert, but I believe the sight words and the phonics are simply two different skills to create proficient readers.

This site says:
"Many of the 220 words in the Dolch list, can not be "sounded out", and hence must be learned by sight. Hence the list is often referred to as "Dolch Sight Word List", and the words on it, as "Dolch Sight Words"."

http://www.dolchsightwords.org/

What the heck?

http://www.mrsperkins.com/dolch-words-all-printable.pdf

I found this... I guess I really don't remember what it is like not to know how to read. They look like you could sound them out to me. Or if not sound them out, sound them out partially and then figure out what they are just from the context of the sentence.

Ok, and I was googling around and found this, too.
http://www.improve-education.org/id75.html

Now, I have read some of this person's rants and honestly, I often find myself nodding "Yes! Yes, that makes sense."
But I have no clue if he is credible or if he has any craziness elsewhere on his site. The guy does strike me as highly intelligent. He reminds me of my grandfather and all his research, rants, and fiery statements at the town hall about our local corrupt government officials.

I don't remember learning to read either! But from looking at that particular list, it sure does look like you could sound them out. Maybe it's more along the lines of the words are so common, that if you can recognize them easily, then you'll have an easier time of it.

I'm not going to be especially helpful, as I was an early whole-word reader, as was my DS. Hopefully someone else who has had a hand in teaching kids to read will pipe in. Sorry!

Is being an early whole word reader really intuiting the rules behind the words you start to recognize and then applying them to words you don't yet know? That is what I thought it was, but I'm not sure since I have no idea how I learned to read.

Sorry, I shouldn't have piped in at all since I'm supposed to be working and don't have time to look up helpful references. That said, I just remember being able to read around age 4. From seeing my son, who all of a sudden knew how to read, I suspect that it involved a lot of being read to, and then figuring out "the code" somehow just through exposure without even realizing it. I'll try to go away now since I don't think I'm being especially helpful!

Many of the Dolch Sight words can be sounded out phonetically (many people don't realize this), these just happen to be the most common words in early readers so the public schools teach them by memorization rather than by the phonetics. Many PS don't teach most phonics and use memorization rather than phonics rules, although the trend is changing again.

We are finishing up remediating my oldest DD who learned to spell in PS, for this child not understanding phonics began to impact her spelling in around 5th grade. I now teach a full phonics program with all my other DC as part of their spelling.

Phonics is learning all the different sounds and rules of the different phonograms that make up words. Sight words are just that, words that are memorized.

Memorizing sight words did not help my ds, as he can memorize lists of words in minutes. His teacher used to give him lists of 20 words to keep him busy. He was not making connection between those lists and the same words in the text.
I have similar issue with spelling lists and my other ds, he has to read his spelling list only couple of times before he has memorized and can spell all those words. Easy As on spelling tests, but if no further connections are made, he will not be able to spell many words from those lists in few weeks� time. It has been up to me to work with him on word roots and prefixes.

Many phonics based programs begin with phonics and easily work into base words and prefixed and suffixes. That then opens the door for Latin, such as in The Phonics Road to Reading and Spelling.