Phonics, Sight Words and Games

I have continued to look for ways to teach my students sight words. These are words that you cannot sound out because they do not follow the same pattern sounds. Most of the time teachers head in the direction of memorization. However, if you are like me, memorization is not your best skill. Similarly, many of the students have a hard time memorizing these words and yet these words continue to pop up in reading constantly. This year a friend of mine suggested a sight word book called Sounding Out the Sight Words An Alternative to Rote Memorization by Denis Eide and Cindy Kringelis. I found my copy on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/Sounding-Out-Sight-Words-Teaching/dp/1942154917

This book is amazing at being able to explain why sight words say the sounds that they do. It matches words into spelling patterns specifically for sight words. It is so easy to use because it breaks down what to say to students, how to review other words to increase word recognition and comes with a games book. Each of the lessons on a sound directly refers you three different games from their game book. Each game tells you the focus and purpose such as phonogram, word fluency and spelling. Here is the link to the game book.

Game Book

https://store.logicofenglish.com/products/game-book?variant=30960856596620

The games book is one of my favorite parts about this program. The book breaks down the games for each lesson through whole group instruction, small group or individual instruction. It makes the games easy to understand. I combine the games given by the book with other games that I have learned over the years. This makes teaching phonics and reviewing words fun and exciting. During our games I am able to also target social emotional skills if students struggle with losing or taking turns.

How I implement in my classroom:

In my classroom I have chosen to implement phonics during our literacy center stations. The idea is that students rotate in stations through various different word work centers. We use things such as pom-pom spelling, play-doh spelling, magnet spelling and lots of others. During the week the students will rotate through stations several times. We generally rotate through the stations twice a day and I give the students 15 minutes at each station. One of the stations consists of students coming to the rainbow table to work with me. When the students are with me, we go through the lesson of the day from our Sounding Out the Sight Words book. The kids love getting to the play the games and practice the words that they know while also learning new words that fit into that spelling pattern. I have taught phonics for several years as a teacher and this has been the best program I have used. It is simple, effective and I have noticed a huge increase in my students phonemic awareness and word recognition.

If you’re looking for the Logic of English website here it is: https://www.logicofenglish.com/