Sight Words
Before learning to read, its important that students can name all 26 letters in the English language, and recognize the uppercase-lowercase match.
Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz
What sounds do the letters make? While there are 26 letters in English, there are actually 44 sounds made by those letters - called phonemes.
The Phonics Song is a fun way to get started on making connections between the 26 letters and some of their sounds.
The "high frequency" words your student can memorize through practice, before they learn to sound out words using phonics include:
| the | a | I | to | and |
| was | for | you | is | of |
We made a Gimkit Fishtopia game you can play with your pre-reader - listen to the audio recorded for each question, then help your student type in the letters to spell that word as they repeat the letters aloud with you.
Turn off the game's music and sound effects so that you can clearly hear the questions being read aloud.
Heart Words - words and sounds you "know by heart"
Often, the words we see the most often can't really be sounded out, so we must know them by heart.
WordWorld is a show "where words come alive", making characters and objects out of the letters that spell what they are. It's a fun way to make connections to word learning. You can watch on YouTube
VC and CVC words
V= Vowel (AEIOU, Y)
C= Consonant (all the other letters)
VC - vowel-consonant words: at, am, an, it, in, if, on, off, up, us
CVC - consonant-vowel-consonant words: had, but, can, ran, her, him, did, yes, not, got
Digraphs - phonemes (sounds) made with two letters: th (that, with, then); ch (much, which, chat); wh (who, what, why); ph (phone, photo, alphabet, phonics, phew, trophy)
Often, using phonemes/letter sounds, you can help your child learn to "sound out" words.
When pre-readers understand a-t makes "at", they can work on sounding out CVC words in the "at family" including bat, cat, chat, fat, flat, hat, mat, pat, rat, sat, that.