Sight Word Games

Learning to read is made easier when your child can recognise on sight the words which occur most frequently in the English language. Although phonic skills (letter sounds etc.) are important for learning to read, there are many words which don't follow the most simple rules and are therefore difficult for beginner readers to sound out, such as have, the, he, my, was, are and could.

Unfortunately for beginner readers, these hard to sound out words are used very frequently in written as well as in spoken language.

Learning these 'sight words' is not easy, as they most of them can't be matched up to pictures, unlike words like cat, dog or run. In my experience as a mother and a teacher, sight word games are the best way for children to develop instant recognition of these important words.

Just 16 words (a, and, he, I, in, is, it, my, of, that, the, then, to, was, went, with) form around a quarter of all the words in most pieces of text (such as books for children or adults, even a newspaper article). A further 84 words words represent another quarter. If you find that hard to believe, try this activity:

• Print a list of the 100 most common words (use the link above and choose the third PDF file - 100 Essential Words).
• Find a newspaper article.
• Count out the first 300 words, marking the 300th word.
• Go through those 300 words and highlight or underline each word that is in the 100-word list (highlight them every time they appear - many will be used more than once)
• Ask a friend to double-check your highlighting (it's so easy to miss these little words!)
• Check how many of the first 300 words in the article also appear in the 100-word list
• You should find that around half the words (150) are in that list!

This is a great activity for adults to try, as well as kids who already know most of the essential words.

Now you can see just how important those high-frequency sight words are to readers.

Print two copies of the sight word cards, using a different colour of card for each set.

Choose which words to use for your game. One important point - don't bombard your child with too many words in one go! For a beginner, choose just three or four words to learn. When they're secure with those, add more words gradually, one by one. As a consolidation/revision exercise for a child who already knows most of the words, you can use up to sixteen words. Pick out two matching cards (one of each colour) for all the words you've chosen. Place them face down and mix them up.

Ask your child to turn over one card of each colour. As they do this, read each word aloud. Ask them whether the words match. If not, they must be turned face down again. If they do match, the player keeps both words and has another turn.

When you have played this game a few times, your child should begin to recognise and remember the words. Don't push them to read the word aloud themselves. Some children can't wait to shout the words out, but others lack confidence, and they really aren't helped by being prompted and prodded and asked to perform. You can help them best by just waiting a few seconds after a word has been turned over, then reading the word yourself if they don't. If this feels unnatural to you, you could try a trick I used when I thought my youngster knew the words but was too shy to read them. I used to fake a cough or sneeze just as the word was turned over so that I couldn't read it straight away. My little one then often said the word for me!

To make a sight word bingo game, choose eight, twelve or eighteen sight words to work with. Using two blank sheets of card, draw lines to divide the card up into four, six or nine boxes (half as many boxes as you have words. Write one of the site words in each box. Now you will have two bingo cards, each with different words.

To play the game, each player takes a bingo card. All of the site word cards which you have chosen to use are shuffled and placed face down in a pile. Turn over the top card and read the word. Each player checks to see whether the word matches one on their card. If it does, the player 'wins' the word card and places it (or a counter) over the matching word on their bingo card.

The winner is the first person to cover all of their words.

Tip: If playing at bedtime, a clever parent can rig the game to make sure the child wins and goes to bed happy!

At first, you will read the words aloud and help the child to check their card for a match. As they gain confidence and get to know the words, the child can take a turn at reading out the word cards.