What do sight words and balloons have in common? In Ms. Towns’ kindergarten class at Perkerson Elementary School these two things go hand in hand.
Kindergarten students at Perkerson Elementary recently participated in an engaging lesson about sight words.
Sight words are commonly used words that students are encouraged to memorize by sight, allowing them to automatically recognize these words in books and stories.
Sometimes learning sight words can be a mundane practice, but Ms. Towns found a way to add some excitement to the lesson through the use of water balloons! During the lesson Ms. Towns wrote sight words on water balloons. Each student had the opportunity to throw their balloon after correctly reading the sight word on their balloon aloud.
“Sight words are imperative for students to become better readers,” stated Ms. Towns.
According to Perkerson’s principal, Mr. Bender, sight words are an essential component of developing reading skills and the 100 most common sight words make up about 50 percent of the material we read!
“Students can greatly increase their reading efficiency when they are taught to read half or more of the words they encounter in a quick and automatic manner,” he explained.
The popular website http://www.education.com provides more insight on the significance of sight words explaining that, “Sight words—those instantly recognizable words that no longer require effort from a child—stand out as important for beginning reading. They provide children success in their reading efforts, and they provide a starting point for learning graphophonemic strategies. Children learn most words through repeated exposure to them while reading various materials. Story time, shared reading, independent reading, and reading conferences all help learners add to their store of sight words.”
The students in Ms. Towns’ kindergarten class thoroughly enjoyed their fun, active and wet lesson on sight words.
Click here to see the video from the lesson.
Click here to view sight word activities from education.com.
