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Sight word lessons and sight word books

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Are you teaching sight words to young readers?

You’re in the right place!

In this post I’ll show you exactly how to teach sight words using hands-on lessons and free printable sight word books.

But first things first …

What ARE sight words, anyway?

It depends whom you ask.

When reading researchers use the term sight words, they’re referring to the words that a reader recognizes instantly, on sight.

Sight words can also refer to words that our readers encounter frequently when reading. That’s the definition I’ll be using here. We want our readers to know these words instantly as they work to become fluent readers.

It’s time to rethink how we teach sight words.

I used to think that when we teach sight words to young readers, we should teach them as whole words. This is why I used to share a collection of sight word books that taught the words through repeated exposure. (Those will soon disappear from the site and my shop.)

But research is telling us that this isn’t how the brain learns to read.

In order for kids’ brains to make new words a part of their permanent sight word vocabulary (the fancy word for this is orthographic mapping), they need to connect the sounds to the letters.

In other words? Sound it out.

Integrating high-frequency words into phonics lessons allows students to make sense of spelling patterns for these words. – readingrockets.org

I know what you’re thinking.

What about words that we CAN’T sound out?

We call attention to the parts of the word that are phonetic (and there’s usually at least 1-2 of them). Then we teach learners to learn the tricky parts by heart.

How to teach high frequency words to young learners

  • First, know our goal here. Our goal is not to teach loads of sight words as whole words, because kids need to connect the sounds to letters when reading. Instead, our goal is to integrate sight word learning with phonics instruction.
  • Next, we need to make sure our learners are ready to sound out words. Not sure? Check out this post.
  • All set? Great. Name the new word, and have your learner repeat it.
  • Name the individual phonemes (sounds) in the word. For example, in the word is, there are two phonemes: /i/ and /z/.
  • Spell the sounds. Call attention to any unexpected spelling. In is, we spell /i/ with i and /z/ with s.
  • If possible, have your learner read related words. Has and his are great words to read alongside is because they are short vowel words with an s that represents the the /z/ sound.
  • Have your learner read connected text. Connected text can be decodable sentences or books.

Watch the video to see a sight word lesson in action …

Where can you find sight word lessons and decodable sight word books?

You’ll find a beginner’s collection below. Enjoy!

P.S. I look forward to adding more of these to our membership site, The Measured Mom Plus. I do not plan to add any more free books to this page. Learn more about membership here.

Sight word readers

SIGHT WORD WORKSHEETS THAT ALIGN WITH THE SCIENCE OF READING

Sight Word Worksheets – Based on the science of reading!

$15.00

Say goodbye to worksheets that simply keep kids busy. THESE worksheets help kids focus on the spellings of each individual sound … which is exactly what they need to master these high frequency words!

Buy Now

Check out the rest of our sight word series

 Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9

 

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You May Also Enjoy These Episodes:

10 simple sight word activities4 Common Misconceptions about Teaching Sight Words Should we teach sight words to preschoolers?

Reader Interactions

83 Comments

  1. DB

    My wife and I teach English in a foreign country, and reading is what we emphasize among the 8 skills of English that we teach. So, sight words are very important to me, and I have spent too much time trying to come up with the perfect list using Fry, Dolch, and other lists I’ve come across. At one point I was attempting to teach all 1000 Fry words, totally unnecessary in my opinion. My wife recently purchased your 240 sight word books and lessons, and I will be happy to use them daily. I compared my list (210 words) with your list and came up some glaring shortcomings on my end, in my opinion (school, friend, each, people, etc). I also noticed that I have 16 words that you don’t. One of my goals was to have a more concise list. “Why would we put CVC words on our list, when those are already taught separately”, I thought. Then I removed Magic E words, colors, and numbers for the same reason. There are some words that I left on my list, like VC words in, am, an, up, it etc. because those are needed fairly quickly when reading Phonics/CVC books. After over 12 months of fretting over my list, I’m pretty happy with the result. By the way, I’m really excited to see intelligent thinkers stepping up and seeing the changes that need to be made with English teaching. Long time coming.

    Reply to this comment

    • Anna Geiger

      I love that you’ve come to the conclusion that it doesn’t make sense to “double teach” words that fit familiar phonics patterns. Thank you for sharing your experience with teaching high frequency words!

      Reply to this comment

  2. Connie Fink

    I purchased the sight word lessons and accompanying books which include decoding and have been using them regularly. They are wonderful. However, they have somehow disappeared from my iPad. Is Rhee any way they could be re-sent? I miss having them already. Thank you.

    Reply to this comment

  3. Jennifer

    Thank you for all your resources! I recently printed off your scope and sequence for teaching phonics skills. Do you have a list of suggested sight words to teach grouped by phonics skills?

    Reply to this comment

    • Heather Groth, Customer Support

      Hi Heather! We currently have 85 of the sight word books on the membership, each one available for individual download. We add new sight word books and lessons each month when our other new member printables are released!

      Reply to this comment

  7. Lana

    Thanks you so much for these free decodable readers!!! I have printed some in black/white so my granddaughter can color and make her “own” book. She loves this and reading the book once it is put together.
    Thanks again 😊

    Reply to this comment

  8. Lana

    Thanks you so much for these free decodable readers!!! I have printed some in black/white so my granddaughter can color and make her “own” book. She loves this and reading the book once put together.
    Thanks again 😊

    Reply to this comment

    • Heather Groth, Customer Support

      We’re so glad you like them, Carol! A handful of new sight word lessons and readers are added to the membership each month as they’re created. The full set will be ready and put in our shop by the end of November!

      Reply to this comment

  12. Rhonda

    Is there a way to download the video on this site, where you are teaching the word “is”? I am working with some teachers in Fiji and this video could be really helpful for them. Thank you.

    Reply to this comment

  13. ulfa

    Hello.. May I still get your original sight words books? My students love the stories from your sight words book set. Unfortunately, I just downloaded a few set. My students asked for more. I know it’s not the right way to teach sight words. However, I only use it for mastered children for reading time. The sight words book set are simple and lovely stories. Thank you so much for helping.

    Reply to this comment

    • Heather Groth, Customer Support

      We’re so glad to hear that you’ve enjoyed using them with your students in the past. They are no longer available, but we hope that your students will enjoy these updated readers as they come out. Anna has also released a new set of decodable nonfiction readers (https://www.themeasuredmom.com/decodable-nonfiction-readers/) that may work well for your students, and we still have our printable phonics books available on the website and in our shop. I think that your students will enjoy them just as much!

      Reply to this comment

  14. Charlotte

    These look nice and I fully support your conviction to do things in line with your conscience, but I must confess your old sight word books were one of my favorite things I’ve used in homeschooling. My 6th child was born when my oldest was still 5 (apparently possible), so the pure simplicity of them made them accessible to me in a way the new ones would have been overwhelming. As I’ve spent the last year trying to keep one 2nd grader on track, catch up the other 2nd grader that got overlooked in public school, trying to figure out what my 1st grader did and did not learn in kindergarten, and keep 2 toddlers out of trouble, those old readers -paired with various sight word worksheets- have been about 90% of my 5yo language arts for the past year (excuse the run on sentence). I loved how easy they were to work in amidst the chaos (and they worked!) so much that I looked around a few times to see if you had a donate box anywhere. I’d mourn their loss if I hadn’t already downloaded them. Anyhow, however they come (and go), I do appreciate all the freebies you have put out there. I’ve used several of them to supplement school the last few years amidst my homeschool envy. I’ve been happier when I can piece meal curriculum as we go than I have with pre- arranged curriculum, and you’ve been a favorite place to check.

    Reply to this comment

    • Anna Geiger

      I’m glad you had success with them! I know that some children can do well with an approach like that if their phonics instruction is strong. But I know that for many other children, it can lead to bad habits and to strategies that no longer work when they get into harder books. For that reason (and a few more!) I can no longer share them in good conscience.

      Reply to this comment

      • Sarndra

        I also used them and have tried to find them on my external hard drives. I was devastated to see that they were no longer on the website. I am working with preschoolers at the moment and thought that they would be great for topics- not as sight word books.
        regards
        Sarndra

        Reply to this comment

    • Anna Geiger

      I think you could make it work very well as long as kids have the necessary supplies: a row of boxes on a piece of paper, some kind of manipulative to move into the boxes, and letters written on slips of paper. As the word reading you could put the words you want them to practice reading on the screen. For each word you can give the whole class 2-3 seconds to read in their heads and then have them read the word or sentence in unison.

      Reply to this comment

  18. Carolyn

    Thank you so much for these books! I use them with my EFLs!
    I’d like to know if you’ll be offering/posting more for free. Will you send us an email letting us know when new ones come out?
    Thank you so much for all your work!
    Carolyn

    Reply to this comment

  19. Haley Bruce

    These are wonderful! For years I taught in PreK classroom (phonological awareness/phonics based), and I was doing many things aligned with SOR. I’m so happy to more teachers following along with it.

    For YEARS I wanted a set of books like these, but could never find them. Thank you for making them. I now work with dyslexia students, and have a structure literacy program we follow, so I’m not sure I will need these, but I will keep them as a back-up resource.

    Thank you again for making these!

    Reply to this comment

  20. Erin D

    I never leave comments, but I have to applaud you for your approach to sight words in this series. It’s got all the steps I learned as an OG instructor in one handy printable. I’m eager to purchase your whole package when it comes out.
    I’m wondering if you’ll be converting these into a digital form? I work daily with many students who could benefit from these books, and the daily printing requirements would be hard for me to keep up with.
    Thank you so much for making these available!

    Reply to this comment

    • Anna Geiger

      Thank you for your very kind feedback, Erin – it means a lot! I have thought about including them in digital form when I package them up for sale. I do have quite a few more to make until that time, though … so I’m not quite ready for that. Thank you for the suggestion!

      Reply to this comment

  21. Micki

    Thank you so much! I have been doing a bit of research as a parent to help my 17-year-old with a developmental delay. That’s probably how I found you in the first place. Thanks for this research-based, free update!

    Reply to this comment

  22. Leila

    These are awesome and the two that we have done so far have really clicked with my daughter. How will we know when more will be added? Will they only be released on the membership site? Thank you so much for these!

    Reply to this comment

  23. Diane

    Hello again,

    The same is true for the book about ‘for.’ It says it’s a decodable book about ‘it.’ I have done this numerous when cutting and pasting and forgetting to alter some key word. Love your work and really appreciate your commitment to following the science of reading.

    Reply to this comment

  24. Diane

    These are beautiful! I appreciate you sharing them. Looking forward to more of them as your collection grows. One feedback point: the ‘I’ book is labeled as “a decodable book featuring the high frequency word ‘it’ instead of the high frequency word ‘I.’ Can you make a correction on that file so it can be reprinted? Thank you for your work.

    Reply to this comment

  26. Sarah Cockcroft

    This is great advice. I’m enjoying your new posts and resources lately. Can I suggest, however, that you don’t focus on teaching and learning decodable words as sight words. For example, the words at, can, big, and, up, am, etc. These are best learned through orthographic mapping, and save the sight word work for non-decodable (yet) words such as the, is, my.

    Reply to this comment

    • Anna Geiger

      I agree that this is good advice. However, I know that many people use (and may be required to use) lists of “sight words” that include decodable words. My hope is that the lessons will show that these words can be taught using phonics.

      Reply to this comment

  28. Judy

    This is GREAT, but its asking for a sign up for each individual word book. could you bundle them together for easier access to download and print? doing them one by one is very time consuming.
    Thanks!!

    Reply to this comment

  29. Meghan

    Thank you for admitting this and making changes! We need more and more educators to teach based on the science which has been around a long time. I was fortunate to be taught this way 20 plus years ago but many were taught in undergraduate and graduate the three cuing system which fails our children – mostly our struggling readers. Thank you!!!

    Reply to this comment

  30. Dale

    These are amazing! I would love to have even more! It looks like a have to click on each sight word book and subscribe to your email to just get ONE book. That takes forever! Is there an easier way to get them?
    Thank you!

    Reply to this comment

    • Anna Geiger

      Joining the membership means you can access any printable from this website with a single click, including the new sight word books. Plus, everything is organized in an easy to access way. We’re still adding the new sight word lessons and books, but they should be there by the end of tomorrow! Here’s more info about The Measured Mom Plus: https://www.themeasuredmom.com/jointoday/

      Reply to this comment

    • Heather Groth, Customer Support

      Hello Kristin! Just click on the orange box of the sight word book that you’re interested in and a new tab will open up asking for your name and email address. Once you provide the information, the link to the download will be sent directly to the email you provided! Enjoy!

      Reply to this comment

  32. Meribeth

    Hi Anna!
    The new sight word books look great! Will additional books be available for sale or only through membership? I am a retired teacher who tutors a few children and would prefer to just purchase the new sight word readers if possible. Thank you for all that you do to help teachers make learning FUN!

    Reply to this comment

    • Heather Groth, Customer Support

      Hello Marie! These sight word books will be added to the The Measured Mom Plus very soon!! That will provide you easy, one-click access for the books. In the meantime, you are more than welcome to download each book individually by clicking on its orange box above.

      Reply to this comment

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