Open syllable one-syllable words (he, she, be, etc.).The -ild, -old, -ind, -olt and -ost word families.Words with ending blends (-st, -mp, etc.).Words with beginning blends (fr, st, sl, etc.).Words with beginning and ending digraphs (th, sh, ch, etc.).(Depending on the setting, teachers may not have time to address the later skills in this list.) When I look at my own scope and sequence for teaching phonics skills, I consider the following to be appropriate phonics skills to teach in kindergarten. PRE-ORDER NOW Decodable sight words for kindergarten Learn more in this post: How to teach sight words. We cannot orthographically map words unless we pay attention to the letters and their sounds.Ĭonclusion = teach sight words by calling attention to their letters and sounds.

When we do this enough times, we orthographically map the word into our brains so that when we see it in the future, we recognize it automatically.

We learn to read by matching the sounds to the letters (sounding out words). They can only do this for so long – the brain is not able to memorize an unending number of words, because that’s not how the brain learns to read. While we may teach our students to memorize a handful of words to get them going, our goal is NOT to teach our students to memorize sight words as wholes. Why memorizing sight words isn’t a good long term strategy Our goal, then, is to turn high frequency words (words that appear often in print) INTO sight words – words our students recognize automatically without needing to sound out or guess. A sight-word vocabulary refers to the pool of words a student can effortless recognize. A quick review … what are sight words?Įven though I use the term “sight words” throughout this series to refer to high frequency words that children need to learn, it’s important to remember the true definition.Ī sight word is a word that is instantly and effortlessly recalled from memory, regardless of whether it is phonically regular or irregular. To understand why, we need to remember WHAT sight words are and HOW we learn to read them. Unfortunately, lists of kindergarten sight words are often problematic. We created 30 worksheets to assist a child in learning the various ways the long A sound can be spelled.Many schools require kindergarten teachers to teach a long list of sight words to their kindergartners. The words are categorized into one of the five ways the long a sound can be spelled – Magic E Rule, Vowel Teams (2), Irregular Vowel Team and Open Syllable. The table below contains 169 long A words. Īn open syllable occurs when a vowel is at the end of the syllable (it is not closed by a consonant), e.g., A/pril and ha/zy. The combination of the vowels “e” and “i” can result in the long a sound, e.g., eight, sleigh, neigh and weigh. Like most things in life, there are exceptions. The vowel team rule states when two vowels go walking the first does the talking and the second vowel is silent. The AY words, e.g., day and say, are not as plentiful as the AI words. The combination of both an “a” and “y” can result in the long a sound. Īs noted above, when two vowels go walking the first does the talking. There are many AI words, e.g., maid, brain and paint. The combination of both an “a” and an “i” (double vowels) results in the long a sound. The magic E rule states when a word contains the letter “e” at the end, it is usually silent and the preceding vowel says its name (long sound), e.g., cake and date. Of course, there will be exceptions or odd balls- the irregular vowel team (“ei”). In addition, the long a sound can be represented in 2 vowel teams (“ai” and “ay”). The magic e or final e and the open syllable are the most common ways. The long a sound can be spelled several ways.

Kindergarten sight words list a