If you are interested in creating stories with Dolch sight words, you will find that it can be a piece of cake. Creating stories with Dolch words is an activity that can be assigned to young readers who are in the process of learning their Dolch sight words. Using a grade specific list, if you are a teacher or a parent you can tell the student to write up a two-paragraph story using those words. You should also consider creating stories with Dolch words as well in order for the student to better understand what you want them to do. Your story can work as a guide for the student to work from when he or she is writing their own story.
Brainstorming for the Story
It is a given that you will be assigning the student a story, however you should encourage the student to brainstorm about their selected story. With the grade-specific Dolch vocabulary words on the board, you should definitely urge the student to brainstorm for a good storyline. You can even provide the lead sentence (using several Dolch sight words).
If you write it on the chalk board, it may be easier for your student(s) to follow. Make a web of potential ideas that can be related to the initial sentence. Have your students think about something personal. Perhaps:
- What they did this past weekend
- What their plans are for summer vacation
- What their favorite activity is outside of school
Brainstorming is important because it will better help your students collect and organize their thoughts about writing a story using the Dolch sight words.
Selecting the Right Sight Words to Use
There are at least 220 Dolch sight words that your students can choose from. As a teacher (or a parent) you can opt to have your students use only the specific sight words for their grade level or you can give them the option of using any of the sight words up to the grade that they are in. So, if you are teaching a third grade class, then you would either use the third grade sight word list or open it up to having your students use all of the sight words up to grade three. The choice is yours.
Most teachers opt to only use their grade specific sight words because those are the words that they are trying to teach. If these teachers are assigning a story for their students to write using the sight words, then they are more than likely trying to better discern which sight words their students are having trouble retaining. The story writing assignment will better allow students to showcase their knowledge of the sight words as well as demonstrate their flair for writing.
Stories with Dolch Words - Format
It is important that you only give you students a writing assignment that they think they can handle. Select a certain amount of words that you would like for them to use and a certain number of paragraphs that you would like for them to stick to. Whether it is the standard one paragraph with four or five sentences or two paragraphs with no more than eight sentences, you will want to make sure that you are not giving your students something that puts too much added pressure on them.
To make things easier you could even select fifteen Dolch sight words that you would like for them to use. This narrows down the scope a bit, while at the same time will provide a bit of a relief for the student who may be apprehensive about the assignment altogether.
As stated before, you might consider writing a few sample stories just to have on hand for your students to use as a guidepost. You can easily type out a few paragraphs and make copies of each to give to your students.