As a Title I/RTI teacher, I try to afford my struggling readers every opportunity to gain success in reading as I'm sure we all do. I have tried so many approaches over the years to help students gain mastery of sight words, but found that it is another one of those "one size DOESN'T fit all" concepts.
I was shocked to find that playing sight word games nightly helped my students some, but they were behind to begin with and this approach, although good, wasn't enough to catch them up to their peers or provide them a working knowledge of the words most often found in text.
I remember hearing all of the debates as a beginning teacher arguing the sight word vs. phonics reading approach. I even remember our district trying one approach and then a few years later flipping to the other, only to never be happy.
I revisited the question, "Is sight word recognition important to struggling readers?" I was never truly sure.
Then came the age of balanced literacy where we learned that reading was wholistic! The heaven's opened and the literacy God appeared to finally end this worn out debate. We learned that literacy is composed of many areas:
-phonics
-sight word recognition
-phonemic awareness
-vocabulary
-fluency
-comprehension
Finally, some things started coming together and I felt like I could actually make some progress with my struggling readers by paying close attention to all areas.
Then came research proving my suspicions about all children learning differently. We learned about whole brain teaching, differing modalities, and other theories proclaiming that we need to expose our students to all areas in a variety of ways. People learn by different methods, right? (Next question answered!)
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| http://9buz.com/media/michael-j-fox--2014-02-04 |
The hard truth about so many of my students is that they struggle with most all areas of reading. :(
My job is to provide them intensive help in ALL areas of reading, and lucky me, I get a whole 20-30 minutes a day to make that magic happen. Oh...and provide it in a multitude of formats to bridge all learning modalities. Nearly IMPOSSIBLE, right?! (No... just a lot of hard work.)
I have devoted myself to finding the answer to this problem on behalf of my students. I firmly believe that each child is extremely different and getting to know their strengths and weaknesses has helped me to help them much more successfully. (Assessments and surveys...another topic to discuss later:)
I also believe that when students struggle to decode coupled with difficulty recognizing sight words, they have little chance for success with independent reading.
Conclusion...
I have convinced myself that providing quality individualized instruction in all areas is vital!
With the little time I have to spend with my darlings, I have to make the time count. I have to motivate and excite, but at the same time provide instruction that will make a difference. Guess what? There is no program in a box, that I have found, that provides all of this! Darn!
This is why I began my TpT journey. I searched for fun and engaging activities and literature units on TpT. Goodness knows I'd had my share of publishing companies and their flip flopping of content. I searched for best practice activities, assessments, games, lessons, and ideas to help, but at the same time motivate my students. What I found was a plethora of ideas, materials, and activities at a fraction of the publishers' price tag. JACKPOT! Or as we TpT'ers like to say Cha Ching!
But the search also taught me that since I know my students best, it would make sense for me to also develop some items for them. This way I could marry the resources I find, with the resources I create, to make the perfect RTI/Title I curriculum. So far, I've spent the last 3 years combining these resources and I feel much more confident that I am providing my students with lessons that are making a difference!
The icing on the cake...
Over the past 3 years the RTI/Title I program at our school has decreased the amount of special education referrals by 25% and numbers seem to be continuing in that direction. Good news for RTI legislation, since that is the purpose behind the development of the initiative.
Which in a long and roundabout way brings me to this reason behind this post, sight words!
I have put together an artillery of sight word lessons, activities, and games. I have lessons that meet all modalities of learning from kinesthetic to written. My students utilize these resources at home and in my classroom. I assess my students monthly over their individualized lists each month. In the first month, those that participate in the practice at home as well as school, have mastered their previous lists and moved on to the next list. This is the first year I have seen this kind of success and I believe I owe it all to TpT (and a little research:)!
I did a simple search on Teachers Pay Teachers for sight word games and this is what I found!
21,457 results!!!!
Check out TpT for some awesome sight word resources that work! I'm a couple of the 21,000 you might find...he he. One of My Sight Word Products Find a variety, put them together, and provide your students the help they need with those pesky sight words. Together we can meet all students' needs! Thank you fellow TpT'ers!
Until the next post...
Jenny
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