10 Most important simple steps to teach your child to read: Step 7

Teach your child to read and retain sight words

This is Step 7 in my series 10 Most important simple steps to teach your child to read. In this step, I will give you some tips on how to teach your child to read and retain sight words.  These words are often called sight words or high frequency words.  I call them story words.  They are the words that a child needs to know to help them read stories. 

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Even the shortest and simplest stories are full of words like and, said, the, an, to, is, it.  But these can be difficult words for beginning readers.  These words do not always follow the letter sound rules.   

A story does not really make much sense if you don’t know these words.  A child cannot read a story fluently if they have to constantly stop at these words.  

As a parent and teacher it is HIGHLY frustrating when your child or student cannot seem to remember these words from one reading session to the next.  Some children pick up reading these words very quickly and others struggle mightily.

5 Tips to help teach your child to read and retain sight words or story words

1. Call the words something other than sight words. I call them story words. They pop up constantly in stories.
2. Play “highlighter detectives.” Have your child highlight all of the sight/story words as you read through a story or text with them. I make photocopies to use for this. From the highlighted words you can draw up a list of words to work or write on flashcards. These should be the common little words that keep popping up and stumping your child.
3. Do not just flash flashcards of these words at your child. Have them say the letter sounds in the words and discuss any letters that are breaking the letter sound rules. This should help the words stick in their memory.
4. Have your child sound spell the words and write them down as they go.
5. Laminate your sight/story word flashcards so you can mark them up with dry erase markers as you analyze the letter sounds. Mark them up with colors or symbols as you discuss the behavior of the letter sounds. Anything to help them remember.

Teach your child to read the little words that will help them read stories

When I introduce these words I tell my students these words are important because they will help them read stories.  Most children want to be able to read stories all by themselves.

If I call these words “sight” words, my students seem confused. They can, after all, see the words.

I cannot call these words “high frequency words” even though they are. My students do not know the word “frequency.”

Telling them to memorize these words or know them by heart doesn’t always work either. Some of my students do not know what that means.

They do seem to understand that they come across these words all the time in stories. My students seem to know they struggle over and over with these words. So I call these words story words. They need to be able to read these words to read stories. My students are so eager to read stories.

Teach your child to analyze the word for letter sounds

The latest advice is to teach children these high frequency/sight/story words by teaching them to actually read the word and not just recognize it. By reading I mean students need to look at the word and say the sounds of the letters in the word. Trying to memorize these words cold oftentimes does not work for struggling readers.

Help your child do a simple analysis of these story words. By helping your child identify the sounds in the words you may help the words stick. Calling attention to how the letter sounds behave or misbehave in the word should help it stick better.

In kindergarten, the students I work with learn all the sounds a letter can make.  Do all students remember all of these sounds? No.

These students also learn many of the letter combinations that make special sounds:  th, ch, sh, ck, ph, aw, ow, oy, etc.  Do they remember all of these letter combination sounds? No.

So, I need to constantly review all of these letter sounds and letter combination sounds.

Decrease frustration

Letters can break their sound rules at any time. Helping your child read the words and analyze them can help with the frustration. They may be more apt to remember them the next time.

Laminate, laminate, laminate

Finally, instead of location, location, location, I say laminate, laminate, laminate! Laminate your flashcards, worksheets, and reading sheets.

The laminator I use is the Fellowes Ayla 125 laminator that I purchased on Amazon.com. I love it. It is small and does the job.

I think the laminator came with some laminating pouches, but I quickly went through those and purchased more. Amazon Basics sells a pack of 100 letter sized pouches.

This Ayla 125 laminator has 3 settings:

• cold
• 3mil. hot (I usually use this setting for laminating my flashcards, bookmarks, and reading sheets)
• 5 mil. hot

I leave my laminator out in an alcove by my home office desk so it is ready to fire up.

Laminate your flashcards and copies of reading sheets

In my classroom and at home I laminate as much as I can. I use laminated flashcards, photocopies of stories, and worksheets over and over again. Another option is to slide them into sheet protectors.

During the pandemic, laminated surfaces were helpful. The ability to wipe down the plastic in between students is handy to prevent germ spread.

I constantly use my dry erase or wet erase markers to mark up my word flashcards and reading sheets. Be aware that some types of lamination work better with wet erase markers and some work better with dry erase markers.

Mark up your laminated story word flashcards

When my students and I do a simple analysis of the letter sounds in words I mark them on my flashcards. I try to use different colors of dry erase marker to help story words stick in their memories.

Have your child look over the markings on the flashcard and then spell the sounds in the words, writing them as they go. This will help your child retain those words and their unique use of letter sounds.

What comes next?

Some story words are not easy to read.  Like the word the. When reading out loud with your child it is painful if they struggle every time they come to the word the.

The “th” in the word is not easy to read until the child has learned the sound of “th.”  Plus, the “e” in the does not necessarily make either of its regular sounds.  It sounds more like “uh.”  Some children prefer to say the word as thee and sometimes that helps them spell the word.

Sponge-like children will be able to read the word the after encountering it only a few times.  Many other children will take very explicit instruction before they can read and remember it when it pops up.

Oftentimes struggling readers will say “t-he” when they come upon the word “the.” This means they have not retained that word and you will have to teach it a different way. “Th” is a specific sound and your child must be made aware of this and master it before reading it becomes automatic.

My next step in 10 Most important simple steps to teach your child to read series will provide you with tips on teaching the different sounds of those special letter combinations like “th.” So check back often for that post!

Let me know how teaching your own child to read is going? What is working and what is not?

Check out some of my other posts for more tips on teaching your child to read at home

For some tips on what to do to get your child ready to learn to read, check out Steps 1 & 2 of my series 10 most important simple steps to teach your child to read Steps 1 & 2.

If you would like to learn more about using a sound board to teach your child to identify the sounds that make up words, check out Step 3 of my series.

Step 4 in the series teaches parents how to make a sound board and how to introduce letters to go along with the sounds in words.

Awareness of the world around them helps children when they are learning to read. Learn some ways to increase your child’s level of awareness in Step 5 of my series.

Next, learn all about how to teach your child to read simple 3 letter words in Step 6.

Shop this post

Gamenote Sight Words Wooden Magnetic Fishing Game found on Amazon.com

Set up a little fake pond and through in the colored wooden fish with sight words printed on them. Then fish with magnetic fishing poles. Kids then read the word to keep the fish, or throw it back and try again. Somehow my students seem to be able to read the words on the fish better than if they are just in print on paper!

Gamenote fishing game

Fellowes Ayla 125 laminator

Set up your home office or home school office with your own little laminating machine.

The laminator I use is the Fellowes Ayla 125 laminator that I purchased from Amazon.com. I love it. It is small and does the job.

I think the laminator came with some laminating pouches, but I quickly went through those and purchased more. Amazon Basics sells a pack of 100 letter sized pouches.

This Ayla 125 laminator has 3 settings:

• cold
• 3mil. hot (I usually use this setting for laminating my flashcards, bookmarks, and reading sheets)
• 5 mil. hot

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