Kindergarten through second grade students at Wiley Canyon Elementary School have been making huge strides toward reading literacy with a new sight word incentive program that was implemented at the beginning of the year.
Janel Motter, a learning support teacher, said the idea to come up with a program to help students learn their sight words came after the district recognized that sight word knowledge has a significant impact on students’ reading fluency and comprehension.
“At all of the schools throughout the district, we have started an emphasis, or push if you will, for kindergarten to learn 100 words, first graders to learn another 100 words so they’re at 200 words and for second graders to learn an additional 100 words so they’re at 300 words,” said Motter.
She added that the goal of the program is for the students to have automaticity of the word – meaning the student would be able to recall the word without having to sound it out or think about the pronunciation.
The program has been successful so far, Motter said. About 40 students have become “sight word scholars” out of 125 students in the past three months. She added that the students have been highly motivated and very excited to earn their recognition.
Once a student takes the test to verify that they know the amount of sight words associated with their grade level, the student is honored at an assembly where they are given a “sight word scholar” T-shirt and they are placed on a bulletin board next to their peers.
“We’re very critical about assessing them and making sure that they really know the words and are just not memorizing them for a second and then tomorrow they don’t know them,” said Motter. “We are making sure that they truly know all 200 words or are all 300 words automatically, they’re not sounding them out sound by sound.”
She added that besides implementing this new incentive program, Wiley Canyon also has another program where the lower grade students are paired with an upper grade student that helps them practice and support the student when they complete a new level.
When students are fluent in their sight words it helps them understand what they are reading, said Motter. Whenever a student gets stuck on a word and they have to work it out, they can lose the meaning behind what they’re reading because they’re focusing on understanding that word.
“It’s definitely a big point of pride that they’ve accomplished something,” said Motter. “We’ve had many students once they’ve completed their grade level of 100, 200, or 300 words want to continue further because they know how much the sight word knowledge is helping them with their reading in their comprehension.”
