7+ Ways to Practice Sight Words

What are your favorite sight word games and activities?

Do you play sight word games with your Kindergarteners and 1st Graders? Here are more than 7 fun hands on activities for sight words.

As an intervention teacher, I’ve had several groups of students who needed help learning sight words. I’ve tried several different strategies over the years and I’ve settled on a routine that has proven highly effective for sight word intervention.

I look at their latest sight word tests and choose words that all the students in the group are struggling with. We practice one word a day. I created sight word practice pages, flashcards, and coloring pages for each word. We practice reading and clapping the word. While they work on the pages, I encourage them to read the word aloud each time the see it or write it. When they finish they have free choice for sight word practice.

I thought I’d share some of our favorite ways we practice our HFWs.

1. Make Sight Words Out of Magnet Letters

2. Make Sight Words Out of Wooden Letters

3. Write Sight Words in Rainbow Letters

4. Make Sight Words out of Letter Beads

Do you play sight word games with your Kindergarteners and 1st Graders? Here are more than 7 fun hands on sight word activities.

5. Build Sight Words with Blocks

6. Let them Discover New Ways to Practice

When they finish their sight word pages, though, I let them choose their own way to practice their sight words for the remaining time. I introduced several activities but I encourage them to ask if they think of another way to practice their words. Sometimes knowing they thought of a new idea makes the activity more fun for them. The more engaged they are, the more practice they get.

Sometimes kids come up with fun ways to practice. I never would have suggested using our letter bean bags because they have capital and lower case letters. I would have thought it was confusing.

I don’t know why, but I have a thing about letting kids use the big whiteboard. When this kiddo asked if he could write the words on the big white board, I just took a deep breath and said yes (followed by telling him to use the kids white board markers and not mine). He’s a super wiggly guy. This was the most focused I’ve ever seen him. He wrote all then sight words and came over and read them each to me as he finished. I was glad I said yes.

7. Use Flashcards to Write Sight Words Everywhere

Plus…

I’m working to put together sets of sight word practice and coloring pages that I made for my students. So far I’ve put together a set of the 40 Dolch Pre-Primer Sight Words and 26 Dolch Primer Words {Part 1}.

My kiddos loved these sheets and there recall of sight words was excellent on their assessments. Each word has a practice page, a coloring page, and a page of flashcards. I used these pages with my Kinders and 1st graders.

I scaffolded the writing taking away one letter at a time.

I really wanted them to look closely at the sight words so I include words that start or end with the same letters. I also make sure to include a variety of fonts in the search. I’ve found that kids need to be exposed to serif and sans serif fonts in order to successfully read the word in the future. At first kids would circle words like seen for see, but it brought about a teachable moment and helped them to look carefully at the whole word.

I think the most popular part of the practice page was the highlight section. There is something so appealing about highlighters.