Sight Word Practice at Home
What on earth are Red Words anyway? Sight words? High-frequency words?
For us, Red Words are phonetically irregular words. They are quite simply words that can't be sounded out. If you sound them out they come out all wrong. "Was" for example is a Red Word. If we sounded this word out based on syllable type (extra points for you if you knew it would be a closed syllable) you would get /w/ /a/ /s/ which would rhyme with gas. Makes sense right? But instead, we get a lazy/schwa vowel in there and get a short /u/ sound. So we just have to memorize these words for both reading and spelling.
This can be really frustrating for our students because we spend a lot of time talking about the strategies for phonetically decoding but even though we can account for most reading and spelling patterns through the study of phonology and morphology there are some words that just don't make sense!!! So we go through a quick and simple process (that takes no more than 3-5 minutes max) to practice these words.
Practicing Sight Words at Home
Easy Sight Word Games
For us, Red Words are phonetically irregular words. They are quite simply words that can't be sounded out. If you sound them out they come out all wrong. "Was" for example is a Red Word. If we sounded this word out based on syllable type (extra points for you if you knew it would be a closed syllable) you would get /w/ /a/ /s/ which would rhyme with gas. Makes sense right? But instead, we get a lazy/schwa vowel in there and get a short /u/ sound. So we just have to memorize these words for both reading and spelling.
This can be really frustrating for our students because we spend a lot of time talking about the strategies for phonetically decoding but even though we can account for most reading and spelling patterns through the study of phonology and morphology there are some words that just don't make sense!!! So we go through a quick and simple process (that takes no more than 3-5 minutes max) to practice these words.
Practicing Sight Words at Home
Easy Sight Word Games
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