"Making Sight Words Seriously Fun!" with Mary Amoson

hello everyone welcome to es GIS celebrity webinar series today's topic is making sight words seriously fun I'm Rochelle and I'm going to be your host for today's webinar featuring the one and only marry a misen from sharing kindergarten we'll get started with Mary's presentation in just a moment but first we have a few housekeeping details for you for better audio and video quality close all other applications and tabs you have open if you are experiencing any audio or visual visual issues try refreshing your browser or even changing your browser be sure that your sign sound is turned up and everyone is muted on this broadcast you will not be able to ask any questions live to Mary however we will be using the chat feature today that is located on the side of your screen find that now and type where you're from fabulous it looks like we have people from all over the country logging in today we're excited to have you for attending live today you will receive Mary's 63 page unit sight-word stations this amazing free unit is a collection of 14 activities which focus on six sight words also you will receive a certificate of attendance your certificate will be emailed to you within two days the email will also contain a link to today's broadcast for joining us live we will have five lucky winners those five lucky winners will get a one-year subscription to yes gi we at yes GI are thrilled that so many of you have registered to learn with Mary today thanks to all of you who are dedicated to helping children and families now I'm going to turn it over to Mary and let the learning begin hi friends this is Mary from Sharon kindergarten and I have to start off by saying I am no celebrity I am just like everybody else listening I'm a teacher but most importantly I'm a learner I learned from you guys I learned from my students every single day I'm so blessed and so grateful that you guys are all listening to me tonight because I know you're taking time out of your day and I know that you have this passion inside to become the best teacher you can be and from the bottom of my heart I really want to thank you guys it is so meaningful to me when I talk to educators who just want to do better every single day so seriously god bless you I'm so excited now let me tell you a little bit about me this is a cute little picture of my family and fYI it is completely possible to have children that are genetically nothing like you so my kids look and act just like their daddy it's ridiculous but I am a wife I've been married for almost 14 years I'm a mommy of two little girls and I'm a teacher I teach kindergarten and it is my heart and my soul and my absolute passion I also am a blogger and I'm from Georgia so in Georgia it's dark now and it's actually pretty nice weather it's that nice for us so do I kind of know what I'm talking about we'll let's hope so I do have a bachelor's and a master's degree in early childhood education I also have a specialist degree in instructional technology so if you've ever visited one of my session up down before or been to my blog you know that I have a little bit of passion for technology I've been a kindergarten teacher for 11 years and I've taught 10 of those years in a title 1 school I do not have the nice kids that all have had this great life I've had their rough and tough ones too if you've read anything about me you know that I love Disney today at this moment I have a shirt and I'll put it on Instagram soon and it says my princess name is teaching beauty so it's my new favorite it's awesome and I love getting techy so let's get this party started first I want to tell you that I really want this to be as meaningful and as impactful as I could make it so at the very end I'm gonna give you a link to this handout and this handout just contains all the short links to everything I'm going to tell you about now so I want you just to soak up all the information I'm giving you you can absolutely take a screenshot picture with your cell phone if you want the link to all these things but I'm going to give them to you too so if you're just taking notes and jotting down ideas I'm gonna give you these links it's gonna look just like this it's gonna be cute it's gonna be awesome it's gonna be wonderful alright if you want to see some follow-up questions answers and know what I think about different things you can join me at sharing kindergarten that is my blog I'm all is Travis book and I will do my best to help you as much as I can alright game plan ladies game play and gentlemen today we're going to go over the big picture what's our big goal with sight words we're gonna talk about flash cards because that's just a lot of what we already do that I have lots of gains activities and ideas to share with you and I know that's what you really want to what you want to learn though so that's our overall goal and I hope you're as ready as I am I let over all the questions you got submitted and let me say let's put first things first first we have to make sure that our students know that we have to make letters that's all you have to use letters to make words my students every year in August they struggle with the letter B and the word B being different same with the letter R and the word are same with the letter C and the word see that's all it kind of shakes them up a little bit and then they're like yeah I think I kind of do know that then once they understand this concept we really want them to be finding five words we really want them to be able to see okay is that a fight or do we know that word and a lot of that's going to be that visual discrimination we want them to use basic words and sentences like I like the cat I like the dog those repetition sentences are just fantastic for them and we really want them to kind of just get on the cusp and no doubt ten words so at the end of kindergarten and I know this varies for everybody but this was the major question people asked me and our students be able to find sight words you want them to be able to use and expand basic sight words and written sentences so we don't want them to say I like the cat we want them to maybe say I want to have one brown cat and one black cat now that would be a very huge sentence but again you can see how they could insert fight words to make them meaningful for them we want them to be able to read sentences using sight words and we want them to know about 50 my school system requires the minimum of 100 sight words to go to the next grade we teach at my school 220 dholtze warts that way the minimum is 100 they've been exposed to 220 and if they learn all 220 we want them to be moved on to the fry list so those are the fly fight word list and we move them on at their own pace now what do we need to do and I'm gonna use my cursor so hope you can see it we're gonna find it and differentiate tricky sight words like the word three and their Salton was we're going to use multiple sentences using sight words our curriculum in Georgia says they have to write three consecutive sentences on a topic most of those are going to be very fight word heavy but if they don't know the sight word they are allowed to use phonetic based words and that's their 100 so I hope that answers a lot of your questions I know everybody has a different amount what's developmentally appropriate guys I don't think it really matters what we think I think we have to teach what we were told to teach and we have to make it as fun and as developmentally appropriate as we can that's our job all right so let's move on what about flashcards the big picture of flashcards I love them and when I left college all those years ago with before the gray hairs and wrinkles started I thought everybody taught using flashcards well one year I had a student in my class and it was January and she knew zero sight words and I was like I just can't be possible I've told her these words she didn't even know I and a she knew them as letters but not as words so I did all my research meaning Google or best friends forever BFS and I found these awesome snap word flashcards I'm going to use my cursor right over there and what I found was these were very visually stimulating for my kids but not in a iPad flash game kind of way more like a very simple picture play they also had a motion and a language cue on the back so my kids could be doing something they could be saying the same thing to really learn that sentence so I really found out that these cards were a great way for me to really really get those learners in they are made they're called snap words and thereby child's first public patience and they're really made for the multi-sensory approach especially for students with a DD ADHD and special needs and I am always the special ed collab teacher so that just really hit my heart I feel like if it's a modification we can make for some students it would probably be great to use it for a lot of students now I do have the one sided flashcard still and when I first started using snap words the first thing I worried about was that my students would become dependent on the picture what I discovered was that was not the case the picture helps them put that mental picture in their head I apologize but they did not need that picture support here's another look at some of these snap work cards you can see this picture right here the little boy says something about like I want it right here the little card is making it little the little person is jumping on jump this one's one of my favorites because the little guys throwing a fit he's saying I want it now and this little dude right here is saying I will I will my kids identify with these so so much so I love them so much I went out and bought them for my own daughter so this is not oldest daughter I call her s publicly and when she was in pre-k she was putting those letters together to make words she was asking me questions and sounding out words and you know using back crayons and there's little backbone thingies and so I got her a pack of these and yes I took a pocket chart for my classroom she has a baton and we're just playing little sight-word games my daughter learned over a hundred sight words in one month using these cards now she's a teacher's kid and she had all the right exposure but I absolutely know that these sight want to work for these little learners they have app to go with them too if you have a few learners in your classroom that you really think they would appeal to you you could definitely try the app out and see if that's helpful to you I'm just gonna look at her picture a minute longer because I think she's so cute all right some ideas for games we can never have enough games games are huge so one of the games I'm kind of famous for happened completely by accident my only talent as a teacher is I can make a game out of anything so my sister-in-law got me this Elvis lunchbox or purse or something I don't know what it really was and she was like make a game out of this I was like I can do it she's like let's see it so what I did was I introduced Elvis to my class and I just said he's my boyfriend it's a running joke and they think he's a lot they don't realize that he's no longer with us and I put all my student names you can see right here I just took some construction paper a post-it or anything like that put my kids names on it and put them in the back then I shake the bag and we danced to Elvis's song I'm all shook up and we danced maybe 20 30 seconds all the kids sit Dan'l all their legals are out for a second I pull one name out of the bag and we make a big fuss and OH Kendall gets to read sight words today and I go through my sight word pal really really quick using those flashcards and we count up how many that student knows I simply write that sight word on my chart and I give him a little sticker and a little sticker says I did a job reading I'm playing the Elvis game today I read blank sight words my student puts that sticker on I have data in my chart they have a sticker that goes home that tells their parents how many sight words they know in my newsletter I just put how many sight words we've taught so they already know that and here's the kicker all my former students know exactly what that sticker means and they all make a big fuss on my current student and how they played the game because they all love Elvis so my bigger kids will go oh my gosh like Elvis gave you new foresight like that it's awesome now B no foresight words probably wouldn't be awesome but that's what we say anyway so here's the fun part I put the name in the little pocket that's in the purse or just off to the side and then I pull another name out we play just a few times and it totally depends on the number of sight words in our pile when we get to about 50 sight words this games a little harder so it's definitely better for the beginning of the year so we play this a few times now Kendall's name gets drawn out of the bag again this to dn't is only playing against themself so I say Kendall last time he played this game got 14 sight words correct today we want you to get more so she is only challenged by what she did before so if Kendall gets more than 14 sight words we do like a little doctor cheer or I give her a star in the star chart or you know a look at mini marshmallow whatever you're allowed to do now I have my data growing I've notified my parents on where their kid is with siteworx I praised my students we are all encouraged in here and my kids think it's a really fun game so I've done a lot of great things with sight words and I just simply played a little game with it and they loved it here's the other beauty if my kids start to plateau on their sight words I know pretty quickly and I know I've got to change something up in my instruction or I've got to do something different to start reaching them more also it's January guys so we know the light bulb is either coming on or it's not and sometimes now you're getting a kid and you're like twiddling your thumbs and you're like do we have a problem do not I need some data and then you know your administration's gonna ask for data and you say we need it in our chart we need it in a chart guess what you've kept accurate data over several weeks over sight words so you have that data to support what you need to do so that's a fun game Elvis game you can play this with Taylor Swift I'm sure you could find a little bag so she's been really popular you can put something there you could do this with any Disney song it really doesn't matter just as long as it's cute fun for the kids I could see kids whip in a day they like nothing using this next game this is a freebie you're going to get a link to this at the end and this is just a very fun game it's called alligator chomp and you can see the little blue arrow is pointing to a map that a child would have this map is for a five-word sideboard there are all the maps included that you need for two three four and five maybe even six sight words then you use the little alligator pieces that the red arrow is pointing to and you write one letter again to teach them that letters together make words so one letter on the little alligator pieces and you hide them in the room so this is very similar to will write the room so your kids take look at the blue arrow they take that mat and they walk around the room and they write down each letter then at the bottom they write that word again across the bottom to make the word they love this so if they get the number two first with the H they're gonna start guessing on what the word is here's the beauty of it if you laminate it you just erase the lamination clear it off take a dry erase let a new word on top they can play it again and again and again this is just a really good activity to teach those students that letters make words and build them up so a lot of you guys said you have to teach one site where today or five a week or something like that you could do this every single morning you could just change out later alligators are located change out the letters and bam you've got a great game for them another really fun game is called Kabam and I know people call this different things you can call this boom wow I'm sure this is not a Mary Amos and original I just took some coffee tins that we have the little plastic ones i spray-painted them don't do that because it chips and then the chipping drives me insane but you can take those little ones and you can make them cute if you want to and then I'm sure every teacher a plethora of foam squares they use they're supposed to knock manipulatives if you don't hedge of a dollar store they have packages of them and so I took my sight word list and I divided it up just like my County told me to um we have nine weeks in Georgia the other nine weeks uh nine weeks and nine weeks and then I meet for a year but however you wanted to buy drugs up so you have like a first nine weeks list a second nine weeks list do whatever you want can be a pre primer primer it can be fry list one fry list to whatever and I put them all color-coded in a bin so I start lighter to darker just so I can remember what list is which so all maybe my pre primer words would be in here and maybe all my prim awards would be here and then maybe all my first crepe words would be in here and as students advance and I see how they're going I want them to practice on their words so I just take super fancy friends a piece of colored construction paper and I write those friend's name on that color and I literally stick this then and underneath this piece of construction paper on my wall now I have a very easy differentiated game it's going to specifically target those site words that I want my kids to know so my kids are gonna play this and I have a picture to show you why that's want you to see the setup of this the most important thing I can tell you is use foam pieces not anything loud and color-coded so if my pieces got scrambled a student could easily unscramble them and if you use anything that's loud this game every time they shake that bin you're gonna go insane so don't do that all right so here are my students they're at a table and the bins in the middle with the sight words they they shake it just a little bit they have to reach in with their eyes closed they pull out their phone sight war piece they read it they have to turn it around and show it to everybody else and read it for them because you have to get checked because you know kids will make up words so if everybody says yes that's what it is they get to keep their piece then the next person goes and the next person goes I'm going to advance it one side so you can see this piece do you see this little star right here this is what makes it Kabam I'm going to move it back so if my students reach into that bucket and they pull out one of those star pieces that student has to put all their pieces back in the bucket and we all go cut them let's put all the pieces back in it keeps going around and around and around here's the thing this game never ends there's never a winner there's never a loser this game is simply a great sight-word practice now here's what I do love to do so in my read game I only put star pieces in my blue game I'll put little arrows reversing the direction the game is played so when you advance to that level you get an extra little special pieces in there then when they advance to the green level I might put a boy's all in or girls all in so if you draw that piece out all the boys would have to put their pieces back in or all the girls left their pieces in so you can put whatever special cards you want to be in there it just kind of ups the game a little bit and keeps it exciting this is a very quiet game and it's differentiated so my kids are on their level if I'm ever very very worried that maybe this red group isn't really doing what I need them to do and I can't get there to help them I just call on a friend it might be over here on the green group and send them back to go be the leader of the red group it never hurts them and that way maybe I can get done what I need to do again this is up close piece of what all the pieces look like now I do start the year with an alphabet version if that helps you as we learn blends and digraphs I go ahead and add those in as well I put capital on one side lowercase on the other in case you're wondering you can do this however you want so I teach them the structure of this game in the very beginning of the year with letters and sounds and then we just move it on a site where it's late at home and that is why this one's yellow because yellow would be the easiest and then red blue green if I make it's more difficult if that makes sense here's another visual of my kids playing the red game all right so I hope that makes sense another really great question we had and this is just a good question that all teachers have how do I get my kids to find sidewards in what we're reading but Mary I have to differentiate to Gotham with you with you 100% so a lot of times we still do letter of the week in Georgia at my County but in a very healthy way we don't focus just on that letter but it's more on the formation of that letter but so when I do the letter R I would have two leveled readers one of them they would have to color the specific site word we were looking for and they would go through and they would say Li ke like and then they would color like they would turn the page they would find like and they'd have to say Li okay you like and then they call it like and they keep going li ke like and then the lip color you keep going now if my kid they're really good at identifying I can move them on to the next one the next one is when they write in their site word so this book focuses on like in this book over here focuses on the site would do so they would go through on each page and they would write the site word do instead of just identifying so episode just a little bit in this reader right here they would just read everything but in this reader right here they would have to try to sound out the word rabbit and go room AB the fit lab it's rabbit and now my kids cannot all spell this on their own but it's one of those things that they work with a teacher with and works really well so that's just a good way to do it and just keeping identifying them helps now what do you do if you have paper rations or you cannot make printables for your kids all the time they have highlighting tape you can use so that would be a great thing to do they also have like kind of like transparency material but they're but they look like little wand and you can put those over words to identify and that helps too all right let's move on to some fun activities because guys let's face it if your kids are just looking at a word and not saying it out loud they are not learning that sight word they're learning what that word looks like visual discrimination is not sight word knowledge so here are some fun activities and I try to think of things you would already have in your classroom because I tried to think of the things I would already have in my classroom so have these letter beads that I love because fine motor skills 101 we have to get it in there so what I did was I took a post-it note here because this was pre es GI days now if you have es gi they'll print you all flashcards and you could easily stick those little flash cards there to make you in here so please know I'm totally doing that and then I took a pipe cleaner and put them in the little pockets behind and to have my hire kids bilbies for me so I do them once a month and they would see this word zero that I already put in there and they would go to my letter beads and put all the letters I'd need for that word in there this picture is slightly deceiving but can you see the orange pipe cleaners here and then can you see the red pipe cleaners here so that's a different differentiation I have a bunch of different rows and do it all the way across the rows of pipe cleaners with different words so my kids could go over there and because they are I'm going to do the orange today and they would say like oh I can't you like if they don't know that's the word like they pull this little paper out and they go ask somebody they come back they cannot just make it on their own so they would make like then it would take this pipe cleaner and strings letter beads across it to make the word like I know you guys might think this would take them 30 seconds guys we're talking about minutes here because they got to put the L on then they got to put the ion then the K then the e if this is a word that they're really struggling with I will let them take this twist it around their wrist and make a little site word bracelet that they can wear the rest of the day then at the end of the day they can put it back in there now if this is like a center that's open for everybody else they would have to wait to the end the center time to keep it but just give you an idea they love this they think this is so much fun use the same idea if you have a kid that cannot learn how to spell their name they can have their name on their wrist on a little letter bead bracelet it works great so much fun for my kids now at the end of the month when I change them out because number I grow after row of these I take one of Milo babies who I'm still really hitting that letter identification and sound with and I let them decompose this pocket chart so they would take these letters out and they would put them back in the bin and they probably say the alphabet and find where the letter F goes and drop it in so we got to work smarter instead of harder it's a very really really fun game another thing a lot of us have are magnets I love these and these are my favorite ones because they have vowels and consonants and I love that so I give my kids their words and then I allow them to make these words now once the first set of kids makes it we usually close this bin and then we just scramble these up they don't have to do it that's just what they typically do I leave this attached to my class this right here I just covered it up for student confidentiality and when they make and read these words to me I just cross them right off and leave all my kids got really good at this like more than a little good at this so I of course being the teacher had to up the game so I gave my kids sight words on both sides and I let them race each other to see who can make and read their sight words first now remember they don't know one of you fight words they can ask that's not cheating that's being smart that's just a really fun way and listen if you let them race each other it gets real so another teacher asked me that's a woman what do you do if you're busy or you're in reading groups or something and you can't tell them that fight word guys I'm with you it's hard we know it's hard my class is packed full I had special at inclusion I keep the same kids you do what do you do so I be in the techy this pack of QR sight work cards so when you scan this code like here you hear an audio file reading this word for you down I go downstairs so they scan this and they read it so if my kids don't know what the word is I literally read this book out for them and they can go scan it now I that made a few different ways this one is already pre-made and there's another one where they can build it themselves so in the past I've had students that have difficulty with one or two words like here and where I can give them both of them and they can carry them around or I can have them put their own book this was just a huge time-saver especially if you're focusing on a few words at a time another teacher told me that she got this and then she made a word wall that's down on the kids level using all of these cards on the word walk so they can scan and listen to it as needed so if you have a short number of words that you're focusing on like maybe 50 or 60 that's completely viewable alright let's move on to ways to write now remember a long time ago when you were in college and they were telling you about teaching practices and they said you really know if a kid can read words if he can he or she can write work well guys you know it's true a lot of kids can identify site words especially my hire kids they can identify tons of site words but can they write them do they remember how to spell them to write them so if you have a hire kids who just master the site word list start making and learn how to spell them it's just really smart and it's really what they're gonna have to do later on the life anyway but let's make this developmentally appropriate right let's bring the fun in kindergarten my kids are not going to drill and kill all day so this is a gel bag I have all the directions for you ready to go so don't worry but I put hair gel in a little baggie and it's squishy and mushy not super thick so it's going to pop and my kids can't race sight words with that bad we're gonna be focusing on building that muscle memory focusing on saying the letters to build the words and let's face it this is fun I can give them a piece of paper and a pencil I can give them a gel bag guys are going to pick a gel bag every day of the week so this is how I made it I have a limp too this don't worry and it actually on my blog right now I did a blog post and I published it last night for you guys and it is full of sensory approaches to sight words but I took a regular baggie I leave the freezer ones because they're a little bit more durable and usually have a double closed closure on it I took dollar store hair gel and food coloring and I made colored baggies all the directions I will give them to you do not worry very easy very cheap I recommend this over paint any day of the week I have it on my blog post exactly why - it will make complete sense another really fun idea is pull and peel licorice this is not typical licorice if you can see the picture right here your students are going to pull this apart it's gonna be much thinner and it gave me with a minute manipulate it really easily you can give kids a pen and pencil all you want but man you give them some pool of your licorice it just got real they know they're gonna eat it they know they're gonna love it and let's face it guys if you ask your parents at home for batteries and pull and peel licorice you tell me right now which of those two items you're gonna get the next day I guarantee you they would spend more money on pool and peel licorice just because it sounds fun to stem this is definitely a favorite and my whole team of five teachers can use this one big bag at one time you don't need a lot of this at all so don't think that this is going to be a very expensive activity very very cheap so this is the first week of school we do the letter L or you did a long long time ago and so we did a licorice the first day of school the first week of school and my kids formed their sight words using that licorice very fun now off on a tangent if you ever have to use composing shapes pulling the licorice is great because they really have to make all the sides of the square the exact same and they can see how many sides and how many vertices they have so just identify fun another blessing that a lot of teachers have is windows in their classroom now secret I have no windows in my classroom I have no sink in my classroom so I'm a little bit of a struggle bus this year I'm in a new room I don't have those things but I used to so I had to take a picture with my daughter at home but if you have a window you can write your sight words on the backside of the window like go outside and write them on the backside if you can't write them backwards you can put up a piece of paper and tape it to the other side of the window then your students can go to the front side and they can take Expo markers or they even make expo window markers and they can practice writing your sight words over and over and over again so I wrote this like was my daughter was working on on the backside and she was writing them again on the front side she'd wipe them down she'd write him again and she'd wipe them down I know some teachers have those clear easels in their classroom that they use because they clean up really well again this is perfect stay mind yet tape some sight words to the backside of that give them an expo marker and let them write write write write write another idea I love is this this is frog street smart start paper I love it I write my sight words on it I laminate it and then my kids can write on top of it with an extra marker I only use a few sheets every week so that pack of frog Street paper last me forever now my first few years teaching I used a yellow marker and I thought that was brilliant but then I noticed look right here on this little kids couldn't always see where to go across on or maybe where the dot or different things like that so now I use an orange marker instead and a little bit darker it helps a lot so if that's a good tip three and I personally leave this slide on there because I want you to see my booboo so you can learn from my mistake really fun again they're just not writing the word come they're saying see Oh and II come see oh and you come if they don't know what they ask all right throwback to childhood I hope you guys know what an aqua doodle is if you don't have a blog post right now that has a link to it for you so you can see it but an aqua doodle is a really big map and it has two layers it has a bottom layer that has some colors can you see the green up here and the blue here and the red here in the purple here and then it has this second layer that kind of looks white all the way around here well aqua doodle only needs water so this is a toy that my kids got when they were two and I just recycled it in my classroom so you take water and you draw a picture or you write something on this top light layer and you can see it through to the bottom so much fun for kids one of these mats can allow for kids to write on it in those colored slots at one time it drives so there's no cleanup if they spill something it doesn't really matter you can keep going here's a great teaching tip I do not have time in my day to open up all these pens and to put water in it as needed so I put a little solo ich cup like those little plastic cups half filled with water on this table and my kids can dip their Aqua doodle pen in it and write if you can get an aqua doodle at like a consignment sale or ask around in school if anybody has a younger kid that doesn't use it anymore you can use a q-tip to write on it too or you can even use like a brand new watercolor brush so it does not have to be an aqua doodle pen you can get really cheap with this and use it you have I say brand new because if it's not cleaned really well you're gonna spread some colors and don't want to do that anyway great idea guys my kids think this is like heaven and earth and I was like guys you played with this when you were a baby they love it I actually keep two of these in my room so we write on it and if it gets really wet and full then I put it over it to dry and I put down another one again this is called an aqua doodle aqua doodle another thing that a lot of us teachers are doing especially if you're trained in orton-gillingham is we're using fan trades I love them but I don't like the mess all the time so I used that same idea from that fall treat paper that I love the blue sky the green grass and the picket fence and I drew on those really good Thanksgiving China plates I got one fence a pack of those plates eight years ago and I took a sharpie and I drew on all of these yes that took a long time if you look really awesome parent volunteer training also directions for how I got the line like this all my blog so you can go read all about that and I have the link on there now for the sensory phonics I guess I found this colored sand and again my blog shows you exactly how I got that I put some colored sand in there I could have used planes and I just thought colors would make it more exciting I bought one bag years ago and I've never had to buy or make this ever again so then when we write our letter letters we write them in the sand we shake it we also form our sight words in the sand we shake it and reset it and guys this is another one another time and Taylor Swift comes in handy I keep it on my cell phone and when I play Taylor Swift shake it off we shake our sand trays to reset them this is a ton of fun for your kids you will love it they will love it and we really try to get them to start those lowercase letters at that red line that's what that's for again fan Trey's just another sensory experience all right so my big idea this is what you guys are going to get for free so don't worry everybody's gonna get this I want you guys to prep this play this game with your kids see which ones they like and don't like but my big idea is sight-word stations a long time ago I realized that I was working really really really hard with math small groups in reading small groups and I was doing all this this small group work and I was using flashcards explicit words I was like alright guys I've got to do something different I just don't feel like I'm doing my full potential on this what can I do and then it occurred to me if I got down and dirty with sight words from time to time I think my kids would do more I think they would do better I think they would grow faster and I think they would have more fun so I dedicated 10 minutes a day to just focusing on sight words let me show you the activities we did these I call them sight word puzzles and I showed you we only have these two words that are one letter words all the other ones are two but you can just see how I broke up the cards cut them up and I call this a table tent just because it's a piece of paper fold them in half and it sits up on the table I leave that there as a prompt to help them form those words again my kids would go are Edie red or Edie red CA and Miss a Miss and what is CA n what is that word that's cannon and this is not a quiet time of my day guys this is actually a very loud part of my day another activity to be do is this secret code words so I don't have a great shot down here but there's a Code Breaker at the bottom and they would associate this number with a letter and they would break the code to bake to make the site learn why is this a big deal think about your lost or of students now and think about that one kid that struggles in ela but is super strong in math some times those math brains need to see the connection in letters and if you let them do these secret code words they see that connection in a way that their brains like a little bit more and it kind of strengthens that bond and then sometimes they can see it this also really helps with the lining work so if you have those really good math brains they can't see that L og and oh gee why this this is a huge help I'm again I'm a techie so you scan this code the answer pops up so they can self check listening stations the number one thing we have to teach kindergarten kids not to read although I feel like we do sometimes it is to follow directions I mean it's huge so there are listening activities to go with these site words so they read these sentences and they follow along again this is a listening activity and it's already prepped and ready for you they go through and they read all these they color the Lord read read the directions lead them through it they find the word see they color the word see keep going like that these are really quick and simple for us but they really require our kids to listen and follow directions huge another game we play is memory I love memory because it's easy prep they love memory because they feel like they're winning and we all love memory because it's really good reinforcement over and over and over again of sight words so here is memory and they would have to find go and go my kids do not get the match if they cannot say the word and they'll call each other out there'd be like you did not say that sight word and then the other kid be like it's go it's go I got it if this is too hard for your kids or you need a differentiated activity put them in two rows or a kid would be sitting here kid will be sitting here and let him use the fly swatters you give them the word find see and see who can swat it first or they can both identify it another thing we do is sentence scrambles this is a lot of fun I carry this over into Center time by putting these up on the pocket chart and really teaching how to build those sentences with sight words remember I told you guys we did that at the beginning of the year we really wanted to get them to build those sight words then I give them a little Senate scrambled using the same sentence right here where they would glue it write it draw it now teachers say Mary why didn't you scramble those sentences up at the bottom will be before they start I want my kids to read that sentence I want to say I can go see a ball then when they cut it up they're gonna scramble it anyway I've had very few students cut this whole strip up and glue it right here they usually love cutting you know they cut everything so they'll cut it into pieces and put it back together but I want them to get that right that reading support from the beginning another thing it is a huge hit is water colors water paints are a huge deal everybody loves them I love them you love them kids love them if you have administration that does not want to see water colors in your room water color some sight words and see what they think of that my principal thought it was brilliant and my kids run to this Center and they think it's awesome if you have kids with grit problems use a sharpie and draw a line over here where you want their fingers to pinch and kind of go lower to help them with it you can have them color vowels one color consonants another color it doesn't really matter this is a lot of fun next teaching tip you know those parents who don't send you in the Crayola watercolors and they're following your supply lists and they send you in that not Crayola water colors and those water colors don't last when you first start watercolor and sight words use all those kits first because your kids are going to trash your paints anyway and then when they learn how to take care of their watercolors you can pull out the good ones that actually last it works every time another activity my kids do is they roll the sight word and I have these pocket chart dice under called learning cubes I can link to it if you need a link there my ultimate favorite because each one of these can you see the seam right here you can slip the little card in there you can change that forever you need so my kids have to roll the site words say the site word write the site word the next kid gets the die rolls of site words right to site work save the site words over and over and over again when they fill up one all the way to the top the game is over they love it and they'll pick a site word that they want to win and they're all be cheering for it so one kid might pick one kid might be C pixie one pick kid might pick go it's just a lot of fun for him one name that I really like is to set up these clear cups and I'll have these cups forever on the same exact cups you can take those same SDI flash card pieces or just a piece of paper put them in the cups and label some fun popsicle sticks if you make them colorful it just makes the game better and they have to say and sort the words yes they have to say it why do I do it this way because the next week I can pull these words out and these popsicle sticks out put them in the snack size baggie or even a sandwich size baggie put it flat in my filing cabinet and reuse these cuts over and over again guys I can't store the cups but I can sort of popsicle sticks this is a really fun one if you're in preschool and you don't think your kids could thread the little pipe cleaners and beads but you still want them to be doing similar activities you can make it just like this this would be a lot of fun form so when I prep myself right word state shouldn't I put them in my color baggies and I'm sorry my color basket I color-coded everything I have a class list here here here here here here they're all laminated with v2v markers because I'm crazy I put the activity in each of the baskets and I put it all my color tables as my kids complete the activity they can cross their name off or you can cross it off however you want to share that love and they go I have everything they need in there ready to go you can see this was for my classroom and I did have a sink and I would keep cups with a sharpie line on the outside of how far they could fill those cups up if that tip helps you I'm glad so my kids this week would have six different ways that they could learn their sight words and really work on their sight words all right how do you assess how do you know what you're doing is working because let's face it kindergarten should be subtitled we assess every day let's make this more fun for our kids so this is an assessment basket I use honestly this was pre eSGR this is what I had do fluoride the program but I would keep my sight word list in here with lots of colorful markers flash cards and stickers as my kids would learn their sight words I would take a different color marker each time check the word they got right imma show you pictures in just a second and writin how many words they got again this was a Fri list but we do 220 volts before you get here let me show you what this would look like so on 1116 this student new 26 when I assess them again they learn 6 more so on 12 6 they near 32 god this right here is called data that's exactly what this is so all the color coding just helps me know where they got which one they did which and the books are messy they're not clean I didn't make this book this was one everybody in my own school use and we would go through over and over and over and over again we need to try to assess our kids you can kind of see once every two weeks would be ideal so I use the SGI obviously because i love it but at the beginning of the year i assess my kids on sight words and you can see how many of them met I had a few strong readers who just got it easy I had a lot that did not this is literally my assessment data from today using sight word stations I have 24 kids in my room from all gamuts of life special ed collab and you can see our progress on our sight words now remember if they get some of this means like one student probably doesn't know one of the words so just to give you a perspective this is how well my kids are doing on sight words because I made it hands-on because I made it meaningful because I made it fun because I made it repetitious because they have to say the word as they make the word they are not perfect but we are definitely making progress now when my kids get all of their words correct you can see we do a 220 right here we celebrate so how do we celebrate so this student got all of his list he's got all his words done and some people asked me Mary why do you have it be there because one year I had kids who are memorizing the order in which I was giving them the sight words and I was like uh-huh so I made a list a to sent home and I made a list B to check off in the classroom parents did not like that but I did so that made sure that they knew that his words but anyway I digress so when they get all their sight words I send this student up to our office and the whole office staff makes a huge fuss about it he's allowed to pick one friend to go with him and I try to be encouraging to say hey someone's I was really close or I try to pick a friend that maybe needs that pick-me-up with sight words and they go with him and they get to see him this child be bubbled that's what they call it they put on a bubble machine that just blows bubbles out and they just celebrate the child this is a good way to make going to be office fun we also celebrate with sight board celebrations so I track my kids progress see how they're growing and I give them all an individual goal so I might say at the end of February we're going to have a popcorn party everybody in the class can come if and then every student has like their own goal and they don't know each other's goals that's private so maybe I would say Riley has to know a hundred words but I know she's already at 80 and I know she's learning five every week so she can easily reach a hundred and then maybe Suzy needs to know 50 but she's already at 40 and I know she learns about two or three a week so I'm trying to make it tangible for each student personalized for each student and really this is my excuse to celebrate with them this is my excuse to have fun with them I've never had a child that was not invited to come to my cyborg party in all of my years teaching because all of their goals were data-driven all of their goals were tangible and there was so much encouragement behind it this is not learning at home this is let's get this done guys I can't wait to have this celebration with you so people ask how I teach sight words so I have a whole bunch of links to show you how I teach him how you can start using them to see what it looks like in action and even for those first grade teachers in here how do you do this with fry words because what happened was my daughter used all my sight workstations when she was in kindergarten and last year when she went to first grade she said mama we're doing 10 words a week in first grade I need help and I was like what do you want to do she goes I want to do that stuff I did last year so yes I made fry words for her and my first-grade team so they could use sight word stations as well all right guys here is how you get the link to all of these websites all of these downloads everything you need you have to type in this on the perspective this exact code right here s K n a ke s IG HT wo r ad es and it's going to give you this exact came out right here with every single link that you need this is going to show you where those snap cards are and the apps the Elvis game with all the details of how I created the free way to grab alligator Chomp no nothing required you just grab it at yours a link to the site word with readers that were differentiated my QR scanner learned sight word books how to make the sand trays for sensory phonics how I teach sight words hat how I start sight workstations sight workstations and actions and fry words so all of these are all there for you I did just release a new post today well yesterday really it was really late last night all about sensory experiences so how you can use sensory how you can write using sensory experiences to get those sight words lots of links consignment sale shopping garage sales shopping do not buy any of that stuff firsthand if you can beg borrow and steal before it and the big thing everybody is going to get a set of sight workstations you get 14 different activities to choose from to help your kids learn the sight words so that is my gift to you as a huge thank you and just a way to show my appreciation for everything you do for me um I hope this has been fun I hope this has been meaningful I hope you got a lot out of this and I really hope that you guys can go makes light work seriously fun stay on the line they're gonna do some giveaways in just a minute guys thank you so much Mary you're getting so many positive comments about people saying how much they loved all the ideas and so we just want to say a big thank you to you Mary for taking the time today to show us all this great information and thank you so much for the free giveaways that you're giving out to everyone who attended live now don't forget we are going to draw for five free years of SGI however everyone can sign up for a free 60 day trial if you would like to try ESG I as Mary mentioned you can sign up for a free 60 day trial please use promo code sharing Kay sharing kay will get you $40 off your first paid year of the SGI so when you're done with your trial and you'd like to purchase sharing k promo code will give you that $40 off all right so now for our winners thank you so much for all of your attention you will be getting an email from us with your instructions on how to redeem your free year these are our winners Jonathan Campos Jonathan compass Linda Corbin Linda Corbin Elizabeth Huff Elizabeth Huff Maria Gendron or dendron Maria Gendron and Heather sniffing Heather sniffing so if you are here you might want to just give us a little shout out but we will be emailing you to redeem your year again thank you Mary everyone check your email for the certificate of participation and the link to this recording Mary will also be giving you the 63 page unit sight word stations attached to the email thank you all for your great attention and have a great night

Channel: ESGI Software

Views: 3,416

Rating: 4.8400002 out of 5

Keywords: sight words, early childhood, centers, stations, kindergarten, first grade, elementary, assessment, games, differentiate

Id: qMvNVYrt8Wc

Length: 59min 24sec (3564 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 25 2017