The Learning Spark

I used to tell the parents of my students that sight words were words that could not be sounded out. When my students would start sounding out a sight word, I would stop them and tell them they couldn't read it that way.  I taught these words as basically whole words…the spelling just needed to be memorized.  I have since learned that teaching these words as primarily whole units to be memorized visually, inhibits the way the brain actually stores and learns these words. It’s actually critical that students match the individual sounds of the word with their visual representations. This process is known as orthographic mapping .  Any time we draw a student’s attention to only the spelling of the word, in a rote memorization fashion, we are inhibiting the orthographic mapping process. In other words, they need to sound it out…even when the spelling is not phonetically regular. Because of this I have completely changed the way I approach sight words. I’d like to share my curren