Sight words are those words that students learn by sight instead of by sounding them out. They are the most common words used in newspapers, magazines, books and online. In order for students to memorize sight words, then teachers will need to create a savvy lesson plan to which students will gravitate.
Memorizing sight words is just like memorizing anything else. There must be a repetitious schedule in place where the sight words can be ingrained in the memory. Repetition is key in memorizing just about anything.
Here are some ways that you can help students to memorize the sight words.
Flashcards
This is probably the most popular way to memorize sight words. Through using flash cards, the mind is filled rapidly with repetitious words. Also it taps into the subconscious part of the mind where a lot of information is stored.
Memorize Sight Words by Playing Hangman
Hangman as a game is a great way to incorporate sight word lessons into the learning plan. Playing hangman will teach students how to spell the sight word as well as how to better recognize sight words as soon as they see them.
Wordplay
You can even invent wordplay games if it suits the needs of your students and meets the overall class goals. Additionally, wordplay when customized will better help your students recognize sight words as soon as they see them.
Free Writing
Another technique for learning sight words is to encourage the students to participate in a seven to ten minute free writing session. Much like brainstorming, encouraging students to use eight to fifteen sight words during their free writing session they will be forced to remember several sight words in a short period of time. This will prove to be very helpful when having students memorize the sight words that you are teaching.
Memorize by Matching
If you have time to draft a worksheet then you will have made yet another technique for memorizing sight words. If you create the worksheet so that it has two columns both columns have the same sight words yet in different order. You can have students memorize their sight words by matching them as appropriate with the identical word in the opposite column.
Play Sight Word Memory
The game of Memory is mostly used to memorize shapes, animals or colors, however if you make small cards with sight words on them and have students try to find the matching sight word card, then you would have fully customized the game of Memory to fit a sight words lesson. This will definitely encourage students to memorize their sight words through playing a fun game.
Go Fish for Sight Words
This game will require that you use a Go Fish card deck and tape sight words to the cards. You will need to make four cards per sight word. Each student could draw three cards from the deck, at their turn if two of the words match they can shout out the words that match otherwise once their turn comes around the student will need to go fish!
Color Sight Word Match
You can color code quite a few index cards and have students match the card with its counterpart. This may resemble memory, but you could make it a little different. You can laminate the sight word cards and have them posted in a random order on the board.
Place students in teams, depending on where they sit in the class. Each team will have a team captain who will be the one to match the words on the board. Give each team maybe three minutes to match the cards.