Sight Word On-Line Games for Beginners

I wanted to find interactive games for my beginning sight word learners. I started this post thinking I was going into a great deal of research, would be playing a ton of games with the children, and having to sift through to find my 10 favorites. Sadly, I only found a handful of FREE on-line sight word games appropriate to the youngest learners, and only about half could I recommend. Even then, there were issues I had with nearly every one. PLEASE feel free to comment with any additional ones you have come across and can recommend! 

Popcorn Words

by Fun 4 The Brain

Pros: 

• It has 3 levels of play.  It automatically moves to the next level once one is completed, but offers the chance to play the same level again. 
• Offers four choices each round, a good quantity, and allows the child to keep playing words until the correct one is chosen, marking out the incorrectly chosen ones.
• Visually appealing, words are easy to read, smooth play.
• The in-between movement game, you only have to get relatively close, not exactly below the target to get the point. 

Cons: 

• Hard to understand the words. May be hard for a child to do independently. I had them on my lap and simply repeated the words for them. 
• It offers to take you to the next level even if the first level was not mastered. I would like for it to remain at the same level until a certain percentage of accuracy had been obtained.
• For younger children, the movement game in-between levels may be difficult as well. Even I had trouble moving the monkey quickly and accurately enough with the arrow keys. The mouse doesn't work on that game.

Concentration

by Cookie

Pros: 

• Automatically goes into full screen mode.
• All 5 levels of Dolch sight words to choose from.
• Background is blurred so the cards really stand out.
• Text is bold and easily read.
• Matched cards disappear, making the game board cleaner.
• Graphics are sharp and visually stimulating.
• Narration is distinct.

Cons: 

• No "all words" option for play.
• No option to change the game board size.

Concentration

by Dolch Word

Pros: 

• Visually appealing, with movement. Cards stand out from the more muted background.
• Words are bold and clear.
• Narration, even though it has an accent, is clear.
• Different, with the sound on the bottom and the words on the top row to match.
• Full screen option.

Cons: 

• With the movement, young children may become distracted from the task at hand.
• Games are only available by level, no all-word or mixed level play.

Jigword

by Dolch Word

Pros: 

• Full screen option.
• Visually appealing and easy to read.
• Manipulation of graphics is good for little hands...drag and drop is relatively forgiving and clicking anywhere inside a yellow box will give the narration, not just in the little bubble.
• Every new game has a fresh list of words for continuous learning.

Cons: 

• No way to set the words you want to work upon 
• No way to change the number of words presented for younger students.

Color and Color Word Matching

by Roy the Zebra

Pros:

• Visually interesting.
• Progress indicators/rewards.
• Drag and drop very forgiving, anywhere in the box.

Cons: 

• UNDO button a little hard to find. will need to be pointed out to children.

Word Bingo

by ABCya!

Pros:

• All 5 levels of Dolch words, plus just nouns and all words.

Cons: 

• The green and white words against the green and white background, along with the smaller font of the words, made them harder for the children to read.
• The game board takes up less than half of the screen size. I wish it was larger or had a full screen option.
• With 16 choices, it was more difficult for my beginning readers to remember the word long enough to go through so many selections, especially since the words were harder to read. Since I do computer work with my students, I just kept repeating the word for them.

They also have an Sight Word Bingo ap in iTunes for .99 that may work better on the iPad where it would possibly show larger. I still don't like the lack of contrast between the background and the words. It has a rating of 4/5 stars in iTunes.

Concentration

by Sightword Games

Pros:

• Game board can be adjusted for 6, 12 or 24 squares. 
• It is progressive.
• It uses both Dolch and Fry word lists.

Cons: 

• Wish that the game board was larger or had a full screen option.
• Wish the words were in bold so easier to read from my lap for the little ones.
• Just my own opinion, I prefer concentration games that create an image afterward, or something to give the children a visual reward.

Others I don't recommend:

Starfall - Concentration: No choice of levels, automatically goes to a much higher level each round, no chance for mastery at a given level. Repetitive and limited words used.

ICT Games - Dinosaur Words: Difficult to understand, no indication to click to start, no indication of error, no choice of levels. 

ICT Games - Word Reader: Difficult to understand, no indication of error, no sense of progress, no choice of levels.

BBC Education - Star Words: Small screen, where the words go is the same color as the background, making it difficult to see the shapes, repetitive words, no choice of levels, drag & drop is a little touchy.

 

Crickweb - Color Words Match: Wish there was narrative of the word, but other than that it's just a simple game appropriate to the subject. I like the one I listed above better.

Crickweb - Number Words Match: Again, wish there was narrative of the word. Simple game appropriate to the subject. I re-opened it several times and the board never changed around, so limited use.

For more advanced sight word learners and readers, there are additional spelling games, fill-in-the blank games, and drag/drop games. Not many, but some. Since we are just beginning sight word recognition here, I focused on the games appropriate to my students current development for this post. 

Tags: sight, words, sightwords, literacy, games, on-line, computer, free, reading, Dolch, fry, teaching, preschool, pre-school, child care, child, care, early, elementary, kindergarten, interactive, English, book, books, pre-reading, frequency, kid, kid's, children, number, color, colour, 

Teaching Sight Words

SIGHT WORDS!

These children may seem very young for such a huge undertaking as reading, but they are ready. How do I know?

• They have mastered letter recognition, both upper and lower case.
• They have mastered phonics.
• They have excellent comprehension of stories.
• They spell their names.
• They recognize each other's names in various print.
• They have extensive vocabularies.
• They speak with proper grammar more than 90% of the time.
• THEY WANT TO.

I also know that they are cognitively ready. They can all swing independently on a swingset. That may seem rather odd to throw in here, but there is a scientific correlation between the ability to swing independently and the cognitive ability to read. 

HOW I TEACH READING

As with all my teaching, it is child-led, teacher-facilitated, physical and interactive. You may wonder how that could be with reading.

We began by watching MEET THE SIGHT WORDS during our pre-lunch educational video time. The children say the words with the video, and act out any actions going on to the best of their ability. It isn't just sitting staring at a screen. Memory retention is shown to increase by 10% per sense used. This enables them to use speech, hearing, sight, and touch in concert to help remember the sight words displayed. They do this independently, by choice, while I fix lunch. I try to participate and reinforce the concepts as much as possible .

Our first hurdle was getting the children to truly understand that words were letters stuck together. We had covered vowels, and the children had watch LEAP FROG WORD FACTORY and LEAP FROG CODE WORD CAPER, so the concept was not new to them. We have always used the phrase, "Blue is the glue that holds the words together." 

However, after pointing to each letter for so long, it took a couple of days to get them to point to words as a unit. To help with this, I added green dots below our first sentence strips for them to touch as they read. I used the blue vowels on the first simple sentences just to reinforce the concept of them sticking together.

On our next one, I did it both ways, black/white text and color coded.

Then I created our Dolch sight word cards. The unit with the word cards, pre-writing word cards, and BINGO cards is available through my TPT store. 

You might think that I would start with the pre-k word list first. If this were a teacher-directed learning activity, or an elementary activity, I probably would. But it isn't. Teaching little ones requires it to be personal and active. I have to use the words that interest them and convey what they want to say and learn to read. I can't be confined to a pre-set selection. We are actually using more of the kindergarten level than the pre-k words. We will also be adding in non-sight words such as mom, dad, cat, dog, baby, etc. to personalize the experience.

Each child has very individual wants, needs and desires. By throwing out a ton of words, each child will choose the ones that speak strongly to them and learn those quickly. It can be a particular cadence to the word, a particular letter sound that strikes a cord, or a specific meaning that holds some tangible force within it that grabs a particular child's attention. By limiting their choices to a few chosen words, a teacher may be denying a child a richer experience and discovery.  

While a few words are universally being learned in equal measure by the children, each one has their favorites, and they are different. This is super important because they are learning from each other in a collaborative effort. Basically we have four teachers, me, and each of the children presenting their favorite words to the ones who don't know them.

I said that it needs to be movement based. For our first sentence I chose, "I am a..." The children took turns touching the green dots and saying the words. Obviously they already knew "I" and "a," so it was an easy one. After they read the sentence, then the child chose what to be for us all to act out. Since it was Halloween time, many of the first ones were, "I am a GHOST!" and we would flap our arms and wail around. The next child would say, "I am a WITCH!" and we would cackle and fly around. They enjoyed this enough, that they would choose to do it as a group independently, always pointing to the words first and taking turns to choose. Penguin, lion, snake, dog, cat, airplane, elephant, frog, kangaroo, countless critters and things have been used with that sentence. They know the word "am" now. We moved next to "He is a..." and Mr. G got that one to himself while the girls still used "I am a..." Now we have "She is a..." as well. 

Our big sentence, "My big dog can go to the..." is a good one. It's chock full of sight words, and all the children are interested in their dogs. It's fun to stretch their minds. They first would say park, dog park, or store. I added in moon and they all got the idea that they could be silly with it. He's now gone to school, the zoo, museum, etc. We always add in a physical activity to go with it, such as swinging on the monkey bars at the park, or petting the goats at the zoo.

We used our sight words to add above the sentence to break it down and learn them individually and out of order. The children get to take them off and match them back up as an independent activity.

Here are some of the other activities we have been doing.

Sight Word Swatting

Letter Match

Sight Word Hunt

Stamping and Writing

But most of the time, we just stand at the door where we have them posted and make sentences that we act out. 

Learning should ALWAYS be fun.

UPDATE: A few months down the road, and they have all the pre-primer and most of the kindergarten words down, along with about 25% of the 1st and 2nd grade words and a few of the 3rd grade.

We also do story extensions. For instance with Eric Carle's From Head to Toe, I put the words on the white board, using our sight word cards and writing in as needed, and the children took turns reading it and filling in the blanks. The words they added, they sounded out and told me the letters to write, then we sounded them out again once written. This enables them to start transitioning from the cards to environmental print. 

The next stage in reading will be sounding out words and phonemic awareness. We are already working on digraphs and I'm tossing in some sound outs, such as with AND, the sight words that can also be sounded out. 

In teaching sight words first, it lends itself to seemless transitioning to more advanced skill sets, while setting the stage for early success. When a child can recognize a good portion of the words on a page, they innately desire to learn the others, to have mastery over the reading experience.

In anticipation of that, we also are reading some of our beginning readers. My favorite is the NOW I'M READING sets from Nora Gaydos. I've used these for 10 years with great success. The stories have meaning, but build one word at a time, working one sound a book, to gently build reading ability.

Advanced reading skills will be a steady progression at the individual children's pace of learning, taught more through exposure and one-on-one experiences than formal activities.

UPDATE: 7/11/2014 They have read all 80 of the Ready to Read! books! Woo hoo! 20 months after they first started putting words together and began their reading journey. They know all their blends and digraphs, can sound out pretty much anything, and are reading at a kindergarten-1st grade level. 

 Mr. G and Miss A turned 4 in April, 

and Miss H is almost 5.

They know all their pre-k, kindergarten and 1st grade Dolch sightwords, and many of the 2nd and 3rd grade ones. We continue to read daily.

UPDATE: 10/17/2014 They put on their first Reader's Theater show for the parents and grandparents. They performed The Ant Bully, If You Give a Pig a Pancake, and an owl poem. They are now all reading at a 2nd grade level and working on synonyms, antonyms, big words, and expressive writing.

Tags: reading, read, sight words, sight, words, word, phonics, phenomes, language, literacy, english, beginning, preschool, kindergarten, teaching, teach, kids, kids, children, class, group, dolce, fry, first,

Dolch Sight Word Cards

Available HERE. Includes:

All 220 Dolch sightword cards

Levels are color coded for ease of level identification when using differentiated instruction. I used ROYGBIV for the basis,

·         Red- Pre-k/Pre-primer

·         Orange – Kindergarten/Primer

·         Green – 1^st

·         Blue – 2^nd

·         Violet – 3^rd

These cards can be used as flash cards, word walls, for fly swatter “Word Swat,” hunt and find, alphabetization, sentence creation, etc.

The sightword cards in pre-writing print

Cut out, laminate to be come dry-erasable, hole punch, place onto a carbineer clip, and children can practice by level or a specific group of words the teacher determines.

BINGO cards

6 BINGO cards for each sightword level are included, covering all words, for small group instruction.

Two sets can also be printed out, one set made into individual cards, and used as a matching center activity, Go Fish game, I Have Who Has, etc.

Word List
Color-coded and black/white.

Tags: Dolch, flashcards, pre-writing, cards, pre-primer, preprimer, primer, 1st grade, 2nd grade, 3rd grade, complete, list, emergent, reading, lanugage, literacy, early, read, vocabulary, spelling, center, sentence, word, words, sentences, building, language,