The Endless Attempt to Improve Sight Word Recall

With conferences wrapping up for the last time this year, I was left with the feeling of worry. This worry is attributed to a few of my students' progress in regards to their vocabulary and high-frequency word gains.

I think it's safe to say that in the primary grades, through grade 3, most teachers know the feeling around this time of year that I share.  We tend to worry about the students that are still struggling with their automaticity and decoding. We can see the effects that this has on their fluency, comprehension and overall confidence with reading. There is only one answer, they NEED to master their high frequency words.

In my class, we study, play with, read, write and do many activities while working with our HFW's, but I still find some of my kiddos, fairly inconstant with them.

I've decided to do some research and try some new strategies for the last half of the year in my classroom.  I'm going to see if we can speed up the gains that I am seeing with my students who are still struggling.

These are some of the strategies I've implemented recently:

1) Super Speed 100-Whole Brain Teaching- Creator Chris Biffle
Although this game is relatively new in my classroom, the kids have really grown on it! We are playing every Friday, and will soon move up to playing 2 times a week. The game focuses on the first 100 fry words, with an option of moving to the first 1000 later on. Students work together to get to level 100, which sounds pretty "heavy," but they take baby steps to get there. It's engaging for students at any level. Check out the link for more specifics.

I used the first two sessions to explain and model the process with a student helper,  while the class observed. After this, I paired all of my students up, made each group one folder, a bounded-book copy of the first 100 words, and a record keeping sheet to stay organized. The Whole Brain Teaching concept (also Chris Biffle) does wonders for my classroom as well.

2) Mnemonic books for individual students: This strategy allows my students to really focus on the specific words that they are still struggling with.  They use the written words combined with self-drawn pictures to study and practice. I've written the words, specific to each student, on one side of a note card, and my students draw a picture that they can relate to the word on the back (i.e. the word: late,the picture: a student running after a bus because they are late). I explain to my kids that the pictures are not meant to be masterpieces. The strategy is meant to help with instant recall of the words. When students feel that they have mastered a word, they can approach my desk in the morning, or before recess, and read it to me in a sentence. When they read it correctly, they enjoy seeing the word being crossed off of their HFW list. In order to ensure that each student has truly mastered the word, I will ask them to read it over several weeks.

3) Relay races: As a class, we get into two groups of 10 and share in a relay race. There is no winner, or loser, only fun. Here's how it works: I stand in front of my class with our words of the week (we have the Treasures Reading Series, which provides 6-8 new HFW's per week).  We review each word prior to playing, and use it in a sentence. The game starts with the first two students approaching me,  saying the word, tapping the card I'm holding, and lastly returning to their line to tap the next individuals hand in line. After we've made it 2-3 times through the lines, I begin to require a sentence with each word. With two students approaching me at a time, it can get pretty exciting and loud, but the students are always smiling, and it moves quick enough for them to stay engaged as they cheer on their team.

With these new strategies, along with the others I am currently using on a daily basis, I hope to see some BIG gains!

I'd love to hear what you do in your classroom. There are never enough ideas!