So… confession time! Last year was my first year teaching first grade and I had NO CLUE what to do with so called ‘sight’ words. Oh- they are called that because they can’t be sounded out.. okay.. OH there are hundreds of them.. YIKES! Literally my train of thought last year. I couldn’t help it! I taught 3rd grade math for two years beforehand. How was I to know!? (And people laugh when I tell them I needed First Grade for Dummies last year.. #notkidding) Flash forward to this year, my second year in first grade.. I’ve got a handle on these guys a little more. I am always searching for new ways to make these fun (because if I am being honest, these words are little stinkers.) We learn 5-7 a week through out Scott Foresman progression in my classroom, but let’s be honest.. there are a lot of kinder sight words my kids still don’t know. SO I have to constantly spiral. Here are some activities for sight words in the classroom if you need a little inspo!
So for this one, I put all the sight words we are learning for the weak on chart paper. We predict which word will be the most popular. All week as students find these words in a book, passage, seat work, etc. they put a dot next to the word. At the end of the week we see which word has the most dots AKA was the most popular. I do have a simple ground rule: Only 3 students at a time are allowed be putting a ‘dot’ next to the word. This is easy because students do this on an as–we-see-the-word basis, so it’s very manageable.
This is one of my obsessions- tic tac toe! All of these tic tac toe game are from Target. But Amazon has you covered if needed. Students have to write a sentence for the sight word they choose to put their game piece on. I use Class Dojo for behavior, so after centers if students have ten good quality sentences with the sight words underlined, I let them have a Dojo. (:
This next idea is another dollar spot find but you can also find bowling pins on Amazon! I wrote sight words on index cards (and even some spelling words!) & taped them on the bowling pins. As students knock them over they have to read them. We also made sentences with all the words they knocked down.
THIS one is probably the all time favorite in my classroom.. Captain Letter Pie!! This one is a little pricey at $129 BUT is worth it in my opinion. This would be a great item to purchase with fee replacement money if you get that at your school! Our grade level has two to share between the 7 of us, so that is also an idea- to pitch in together. You can use this in so many ways, but for sight words I simply write the words I want on index cards. My class is split into 3-4 groups, with one student in each group being a point guard and one being a team captain. The other members are letter ninjas. You basically pour the letter balls all over your room. Captains get a card for everyone to build with the letter balls. When a word is built, the point guard goes and gets a pie piece. Then the letter balls are thrown back into Captain Letter Pie’s mouth and the captain goes and grabs a new word. The team that wins is whoever has the most pie pieces when you call time! I love the letter recognition that is constantly focused on. I also make all the students in the group read the word to me before they get their pie point.
