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Ep. 68 Sight Words: The Good, the Bad & the What Were They Thinking?!
486 Plays14 days ago
In this episode of Play On Words, Miss Beth is bringing the heat—and the research—on one of the most asked-about early reading topics: sight words.
What even are sight words? Should your child be memorizing them? Is there a better way? What do syllables have to do with all this? And what should you do if your child’s school is sending home flashcards and calling it a day?
Whether you’ve got a preschooler being told to memorize a word list or you’re just trying to figure out what “high frequency” really means—this one’s for you.
✨ We’ll cover:
- The difference between sight words and high-frequency words (yes, there’s a difference!)
- Why some approaches to teaching sight words are actually holding kids back
- What you can do to help your child recognize words with confidence
- Open vs. closed syllables (in a way that actually makes sense)
- Miss Beth’s favorite sight word activities that don’t rely on memorizing
📩 A real parent question kicks things off:
“My child goes to a play-based preschool. I asked what their literacy goals are and they said they’re introducing memorizing sight words. Is this the right track?”
Spoiler: Miss Beth has thoughts. And she’s not afraid to say what’s helpful—and what’s just hype.
Grab your headphones, kiss your brain, and let’s talk about what really works when it comes to growing strong, confident readers.
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Transcript
Introduction to First Grade Boot Camp
00:00:00
Speaker
you If you are a parent of a first grader or about to be, you need to hear this. I have created, many of you know, the ultimate first grade on-demand course called First Grade Boot Camp.
00:00:11
Speaker
And it's designed to help your child grow into a competent, joyful reader while giving you the tools and the support you need to make it happen at home. In just a couple minutes a day, using the science of reading research and making it very fun, efficient, and quick, like 10 to 15 minutes a day.
00:00:30
Speaker
This isn't just any
Course Design and Mindset
00:00:31
Speaker
other program. It's literally a roadmap to success, like lifelong success, built on proven reading strategies and research and touch of helping kids' mindset around perfection and being okay with making mistakes.
00:00:48
Speaker
Because let's face it, teaching your child to read can feel really overwhelming. And that's why I built this course. And I am here for you. You don't have to do this alone. We're in this together.
00:00:59
Speaker
So if you've been waiting for the perfect time to invest in your child's future, this is it. Head to bigcityreaders.com. Grab at the top if you click all classes, scroll down to first grade boot camp and enroll.
00:01:13
Speaker
Let's do this together.
Understanding Sight Words: Importance and Misconceptions
00:01:25
Speaker
Hello, welcome back to the Play on Words podcast. It's Miss Beth. And today I want to talk about a very hot topic and that is sight words.
00:01:39
Speaker
Now, if you're like, I did not know this was a hot topic. What are you talking about? you probably are not in this stage yet. You probably just have a baby or a toddler and that's okay. Cause I'm going to try to explain this in the simplest way possible. Okay.
00:01:54
Speaker
So sight words, I'll just start at like a high level explanation. So sight words, people will say are very important for kids to master because these, this list of sight words make up 75% of the words used in used in beginning reading books, like, you know, like books that you can decode and decoding means like sound out a word like at, when you look at it, um, they are known as, or, or all, they're also known as high frequency words or red words or snap words.
00:02:33
Speaker
Um, And some people do it the right way, but many do not because we often have been taught that sight words cannot be decoded and they just need to be memorized.
00:02:46
Speaker
And I am guilty of this. I'm so guilty of this. i my first few years of teaching, I remember like saying like kids just needed to memorize more words and then they could read, but then something happened.
Criticisms of Sight Word Strategies
00:03:02
Speaker
I was teaching first grade and, you know, I had the sight words all over my board. So a lot of times in a classroom now, I, now when I work with parents or or schools, I'm like run. If you see a sight word wall, a sound wall is different.
00:03:18
Speaker
Sound wall is great. Sight word wall, not so great, but I was teaching. Okay. I was teaching and I had this student, let's call her Julia. That's not her real name.
00:03:29
Speaker
um But Julia was reading a book. So the sight word books or or the sight word focus is if we think that most children's literature is filled up of these words that kids can't decode or sound out, and we just tell them to memorize like words like the, of, where, because if they just memorize them, then when they see them, they don't really have to use any reading skills.
00:03:55
Speaker
And they can just they just know that word because they memorized it. It's the same thing that, uh, same reason that they would know, um, a shoe is a shoe, right. But they don't really know how to use it. So it's like, as if you've seen a shoe all the time, you're like I know that's a shoe, but you don't know how to put it on.
00:04:14
Speaker
Um, or like the, the importance of it or like what to do in another situation. So, okay. So I was working with Julia um,
00:04:26
Speaker
The book she was reading, it it had this repetition that you'll see in a lot of children's books that I'm hoping to fix so that this doesn't keep happening by writing more children's books.
00:04:38
Speaker
um But it was a pattern. So it was like, I like to play with my dog. I like to play with my friend And so if you memorize the first pattern and then the word the last word is what changes and you look at the picture, you can take a guess at what that last word is.
00:05:01
Speaker
Now this okay for preschoolers or pre-readers to do because they're showing different understanding of literacy skills. So it's not bad if your pre-pre-reader is doing this because they're understanding like tracking print or concept of a word. so There's a lot, and they're building confidence. This is not what we want to be taught in kindergarten and first grade.
00:05:24
Speaker
And this is not what we want kids to rely on. This is something that we automatically do. um And and it's that's great that we do it. Like if we are stuck and we've used all of the skills that we've learned and still can't figure something out, then you use other clues like pictures or like words you've seen before and take a guess.
00:05:42
Speaker
But we don't want to teach kids that that's what they should do. but I was teaching kids that that's what they should do. And because I was taught in school that that's what I should do.
00:05:55
Speaker
So sight words kind of go hand in hand with these other reading strategies made famous by a woman named Marie Clay, if you want to look into her, but I don't want to be too like nitty gritty on this podcast. I want to be like a little easy to digest and fun and quick.
00:06:12
Speaker
So The strategies were things like eagle eye. Can you look at the picture or Skippy Frog? Skip the word and come back to it after you finish the sentence. And these, again, are not bad, but our brain already knows how to do this. Like with that stuff we naturally do.
00:06:28
Speaker
So it's not bad to do that. It's bad to teach this as a reading strategy. um This is just a life strategy, but we need to actually teach reading strategies to kids.
Teaching Effective Reading Skills
00:06:41
Speaker
We need to actually teach them how to decode words. Like your brain is wired to learn how to walk and talk. That's developmental. It is not wired to learn how to read.
00:06:51
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We have to teach it how to read. So if we just like wait and see and expect kids to kind of get it that's, we're doing a huge disservice. So These are all things that i didn't learn as a teacher until I went to study the science of reading.
00:07:09
Speaker
um So Julia was reading a story. I like to play with my friend. And I was doing assessments and I conducted, oh, probably 10,000 reading assessments. So I have this assessment memorized, like the back of my hand, which by the way, like Who has the back of their hand to memorize? I mean, yeah, I could probably pick it out of a lineup, but like, I don't really look at the back of my hands very often.
00:07:35
Speaker
um Anyway, so Julia was reading and I'm marking down the assessment that she's getting it. She's using the picture cues, clues she's using, you know, she's able to touch each word that in the sentences she said, I like to play with my, and I even, um you know, initiated like, okay, look at the picture. What could it be? No, look at the first letter.
00:07:58
Speaker
but The first letter is F. And what's the picture? It's a girl. So, hmm, I like to play with my girl. No, what could it be? Friend. Okay.
00:08:09
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In case this is new to you, this is not a reading skill. Like this is a great inferencing skill, but this is not reading. And that is the thing that we need to differentiate. Just memorizing a pattern is not reading. So anyway, i fight we she finally got to this page that was, I like to play with my bicycle and i she's six years old. And this was, um, in like a ah neighborhood on the far South side of Chicago.
00:08:39
Speaker
And i I, was, I was kind of like Chicago, if you're not from here is like, it's cold a lot of the year. So outdoor activities aren't always something that kids do. Plus like certain neighborhoods, like you might not see kids playing outside as much or certain family circumstances.
00:09:00
Speaker
Don't, you know, if your parents are working a lot of jobs, you don't have the opportunity to do things that we just kind of take for, not for granted, but we think that everybody knows what a bicycle is.
00:09:16
Speaker
At least I did. And that's when my privilege met the reading crisis in America. And hi i was like using the queuing system. Like I said, okay, I like to play with my, what's that a picture of?
00:09:34
Speaker
And she didn't know what it was. She did not know what a bicycle was. And you might be thinking, of course, every child has seen a bicycle, but she lived with her grandma.
00:09:46
Speaker
she didn't really go outside very much. Her family was doing the very best that they could for her with what they had and what they were given was not enough.
00:10:00
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And I realized that the strategies that I was giving her
Impact of Educational Privilege on Reading
00:10:05
Speaker
were not enough. And I realized the strategies that I was trained in to teach kids were rooted and privilege and reading is something that everyone should be able to do.
00:10:19
Speaker
But we are expecting when we teach these skills that we're expecting that everyone has the same level of background knowledge and the same amount of opportunities to know the same amount of words.
00:10:34
Speaker
And this is why we talked about in the last episode about the language um being so connected to literacy that, you know, if she wasn't talked to as much as a baby She's already in a deficit. She knows way less words.
00:10:51
Speaker
She has a smaller vocabulary. She has less experiences. But that shouldn't mean that she doesn't read as well because we can teach every child to actually read if we follow the science.
00:11:07
Speaker
So that's kind of spearheaded my journey of of teaching Sorry, my dog is being annoying.
00:11:19
Speaker
That spearheaded my journey of realizing I was not taught this and I can, I must, if I believe in changing the education system, if I believe in helping every single child and parent not feel so alone, that starts with not feeling isolated in reading. So I knew something was up because all of a sudden it clicked to me, my 22 year old self, it clicked.
00:11:43
Speaker
Wait a minute, this isn't a reading skill. If not, everyone has seen the same amount of things. And so I went into a research and analyze mode. And that's when I learned about the science of reading and the Orton Gillingham approach, um which is multi-sensory. It was originally designed like over half a century ago um to help kids or people with dyslexia. And, but then research has shown over the last, you know, 60 plus years that every
00:12:17
Speaker
child, every person benefits from learning to read in a systematic structured way, which means like following a certain progression um and not just teaching kids to guess. So that's my backstory with sight words and the queuing system.
00:12:31
Speaker
So let's get back into sight words. So then sight words go along with this, because if you memorize a list of sight words, that's going to be 75% the book. And then we teach the cue to look at the picture.
00:12:42
Speaker
So 75% you have memorized and then you look at the picture that's reading, right? Wrong. That is so wrong. And I want to make that very clear. But also, I'm not, i am going to come for the universities that are still teaching this the wrong way.
00:12:58
Speaker
And, but it's not the teacher's fault if they don't know. It is if they know and don't speak up. um But there is a lot to overcome in administration. And you do, you just have to, you have to advocate. You have to go so hard.
00:13:15
Speaker
Oh my goodness. Why is my dog so whiny today? ok Okay. sight words. Oh my goodness. Okay. So you'll start to see sight words actually almost made me cry yesterday on Instagram. Somebody sent me a message that said, you know, um my child's preschool is play-based, but I asked what their early literacy programming is. And they said that they've started to cite words. And I literally almost cried. I felt so sick to my stomach.
00:13:42
Speaker
Because this is like playing is the most important part of preschool. And you can totally introduce play based literacy games. That's that's what all of my courses are rooted in. All kids feel like it's fun. They're like, oh, I don't like to go to school, but I love Miss Betts classes.
00:14:02
Speaker
It's like, yes, because it can be both. It can be fun. and also the right way, the stop following the science of learning to read.
00:14:13
Speaker
So you should not see a list of sight words coming home to memorize. But if you do see a list of words, there is a right way to teach sight words. So, okay, I think that's the definition, pretty good definition of sight words.
00:14:27
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um There's, you know, people will tell you they don't follow basic phonics principles, so they can't be sounded out. um And that it's an effective reading strategy for decoding unknown words for beginners.
00:14:43
Speaker
But it's not. it's It's if we get kids, so it looks like kids can read if they can memorize a bunch of sight words and they're passing with flying colors in kindergarten and first grade, or you might have a child who cannot get sight words and they're not doing well.
00:15:02
Speaker
I'm here to tell you that's great. That is great because you don't want this. You will miss the problems, the warning signs, the red flags. you'll miss them because if they memorize two to 300 sight words by first, second grade, it looks like they can read.
00:15:20
Speaker
And the reason for this, that, that I think that if you're not really paying attention, because it's really is hard for teachers to have to pay attention to everything and to be an expert in every subject and behavior management and also be advocating and also like not have any breaks. Like there's so much.
00:15:36
Speaker
So I do not fault teachers for not noticing this, but if a child memorizes 200 sight words, it looks like they're an excellent reader and they're passing these levels. So like the system that I worked with was Fontys and Pinnell, which has been widely discredited, but um it's like A to Z. So if you hear, you know, your child's teacher might say like, they're reading at a K now, amazing. Which first of all, I mean, this is going to have to be a podcast for another day maybe, but reading levels were never intended for parents or kids to know.
00:16:08
Speaker
They were intended for teachers to be able to collect data So I always think it's a warning, a red flag, orange flag when um parents or kids are talking about reading levels.
00:16:20
Speaker
ah That was never the intention. But at the same time, I do understand and empathize that it is the easiest, fastest way to tell a parent kind of where their child is. But here's the problem. It doesn't really tell them where their child is.
00:16:33
Speaker
Parents are like relieved or excited or celebrating that they've grown this many levels. But then we see kids in third and fourth grade are not really understanding how to read.
00:16:48
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And once kids get into third grade, so at the time of this recording, ah statistics are always changing, but only one in three third graders is reading proficiently.
00:17:00
Speaker
And the reason that it's so important to catch this before third grade is because that's when the transition from learning to read to reading to learn happens.
00:17:12
Speaker
And we need kids to have strong foundations by third grade or else that is the year that they are going to get left in
Third-Grade Reading Proficiency Concerns
00:17:20
Speaker
the dust. And it is so much harder to overcome.
00:17:23
Speaker
so When we see kids passing all these levels in first and second grade, it looks like they're reading and it's so exciting. We just celebrate, celebrate, celebrate. But then we see so many problems come in third grade and it's just so tragic. And our country, know this is gonna be a lighthearted podcast,
00:17:43
Speaker
but our country is at an all time low of what is happening in the reading world. And this is no surprise. We know that kids aren't being taught how to read the right way because teachers aren't being taught how to teach kids how to read the right way.
00:17:56
Speaker
So anyway, sight words. Okay. There is a right way to teach sight
Introduction to Orthographic Mapping
00:18:02
Speaker
words. So it's not, if you see a sight word list, it's not necessarily bad unless they're telling you to have your kids memorize it, but it's called orthographic mapping.
00:18:11
Speaker
And ah kind Let me think of how to explain this in the easiest way to understand. So orthographic mapping is using a part of the brain to understand letter formations and sound connections to pair the spelling with the pronunciation of a word that is stored in an actual way to recall that information as opposed to just memorizing it.
00:18:41
Speaker
And so we want kids um to be able to acquire new words. And there are patterns that they haven't learned yet. So say the word of.
00:18:53
Speaker
So the word of sounds like it would be spelled ah U, V, right? So the first thing that we do in orthographic mapping. So if your child, now now you'll know if your child is ready for this. So if you have three-year-old, they're probably not going to be ready for this.
00:19:10
Speaker
but here's how we want to introduce sight words. And I know that it's going to seem much more complicated than just memorizing the word, but trust me when I say the research shows what happens in the brain, that orthographic mapping is the only way to actually store the words and the tools and the skills they need to actually recall, read, and write that word, which by the way, if they can read it, they should be able to write it too. um Now,
00:19:40
Speaker
Sometimes kids can read really well um very early so that it looks a little bit differently. But there shouldn't be too big of a misalignment between reading and writing.
00:19:51
Speaker
And if there is, that will show you kind of where you need to focus and what foundational gaps might be missing.
Building Confidence Through Problem-Solving in Reading
00:19:57
Speaker
um So orthographic mapping. So let's take the word of.
00:20:02
Speaker
We know it's spelled OF. But I'm working with a first grader learning this word. I'm going to say, okay Let's write this sentence. Maybe we're writing the sentences. I found a bunch of rocks and they get stuck on the word of, and I'm introducing it for the first time.
00:20:21
Speaker
So I'm going to ask them, i'm like, Ooh, let's freeze there. Of is a tricky word. It's a rule breaker word. We haven't learned all of these patterns yet. So it's kind of hard to know how to spell that word.
00:20:35
Speaker
So we you're going to validate that this is confusing. If we just say to kids, just memorize it, it doesn't make sense, then they're going to go with that attitude about reading. Like, oh, it doesn't really make sense. But actually, we want to teach them that it a lot does make sense and that they have skills. They are problem solvers. They're decoders.
00:20:54
Speaker
This is going to transfer over into all areas of their life, not just reading. So equip them and with with their competence. Build their competence here. So yeah, this one's a little tricky.
00:21:07
Speaker
Let's count the sounds that you hear. So then I'm going to use my fingers, uh, two sounds, two fingers, two sounds. Then i'm going to do two lines on the board um for those two sounds.
00:21:22
Speaker
I said, what is the, I'll say, what is the first sound you hear? Again, and this is why we want to focus on sounds. We want to say, what sound do you hear? Not what letter do you hear? What sound do you hear? Cause we don't hear letters.
00:21:36
Speaker
We see letters. We hear sounds. This is why learning to read starts with your eyes closed.
Orthographic Mapping Techniques
00:21:42
Speaker
what sound do you hear? And I want them to say, ah And I say, yeah, what letter usually spells uh?
00:21:47
Speaker
And they'll say you. and I'll say, exactly, kiss your brain. That's excellent. We want to celebrate that they do know that. That's exactly what it sounds like.
00:21:58
Speaker
But here's the hard part. Here's the silly part. This word, okay, then we'll do the next sound. What's the next sound you hear? Vvv. Yeah, what letter usually spells v, v. Yeah, you're right.
00:22:12
Speaker
So this is what I'll say. That's exactly right. That is exactly how it sounds. But this is one of those special words. We have to know it by heart.
00:22:23
Speaker
And we it's spelled like this. oh O-F, of. We're going to put a heart around it because we know we have to know it by heart. So we're explaining it.
00:22:35
Speaker
And then we're going to do something multisensory to store it. So that could be spelling it on your arm. um So that so you take your right hand, tap your um shoulder and you're going to spell it. Oh, F of.
00:22:50
Speaker
Oh, F of. You're just padding it as you spell it. Spell it now. So now we are doing the letters, not the sounds. So that is using bilateral coordination to store it in our brain in a different way then just memorizing it.
00:23:07
Speaker
So we're storing it in our brain. We're locking it. We're going to say it in a sentence. I would like to have a bowl full of ice cream for dinner.
00:23:19
Speaker
Let them say a sentence, you say a sentence too. You might wanna write it in sand or shaving cream or even just on the carpet or trace it in the air. So we're just gonna use as many senses as we can. We're gonna say it, we're gonna look at it, we're gonna hear it, we're gonna feel it.
00:23:32
Speaker
And that's how we store it. Now I know it feels like that is like so many extra steps, but it's kind of like, okay, it's kind of like if you were going to run a marathon. And it feels definitely easier to not have to train for the marathon and to just run it, right? Well, no, actually, because you're probably a normal human that's thinking, no, that feels really hard and it would be easier if i trained. So we're just doing the training right now. So then a big race, like a marathon, is no big deal.
00:24:00
Speaker
So it feels like tedious to take like three months to train up to running 26 miles. But that's what we're doing here when we're teaching this orthographic mapping and we're actually taking the time. So it feels like it takes longer now, but it is going to be make things so much faster in the long run.
00:24:21
Speaker
So that's what you do. And and you can kind of teach yourself how to do this. It doesn't have to be very complicated. So if you have a child learning sight words, just think about what parts don't follow the rules to you. So if we have the word, let me think of another sight word, she.
00:24:38
Speaker
So she actually is decodable, but it's often a sight word because kids don't usually learn open and closed syllables, which I'll talk about it another time.
00:24:50
Speaker
Open and close syllables until kindergarten. So often she um will be a sight word. I'll do a quick, I'll explain open and close syllables really quickly in case you're curious.
00:25:01
Speaker
Curious. So syllables are important. This is, syllables are important for preschoolers to, and every child to understand because we, if we look at things in syllables and know how to break apart syllables, we will know how to read any word I tell kids, even if it has 500 letters, because our brain will automatically break apart the syllables.
00:25:23
Speaker
So we can read it and we can write it if we can break apart syllables. So an open and closed syllables, this is an important thing that kindergartners usually learn. But um if you want more information about this, I actually have a course at bigcityreaders.com. It's called ready to read and write, and I'll teach you about, I'll teach you how to teach your kids, and they do the lesson with you about open and closed syllables, and then we really dive into it in spelling rules for first and second and third graders.
00:25:48
Speaker
But an open syllable is a syllable or word that is not closed in by a consonant. So the vowel, A-E-I-O-U,
00:26:04
Speaker
um is not closed in by a consonant. So that would be she. And when it's an open syllable, the vowel says its name, the long vowel instead of a short vowel.
00:26:15
Speaker
So that would be, if if we teach short vowels first, that would be a is yeah E is E, I is I, O is U is A. A, E, I, O, you did I do them all?
00:26:32
Speaker
um And then their long vowel sound, the first one we teach is that they say their name. So A is A, E is E, I is I, O is O, U is U. So when we see a syllable that ends in a vowel that is not closed in by a consonant, the it's an open syllable. An open syllable means it says it's long sound.
00:26:55
Speaker
So SH, E, two sounds. SH is the digraph. That's one sound. an E. I know that it's going to be E and not E because it's not closed in by a consonant.
00:27:09
Speaker
But if we close it in with a consonant, like add the letter D, the word is shed, sh-e-d. And that means it's a short vowel sound because it's a closed syllable.
00:27:20
Speaker
Okay. So open and closed syllables.
Long-Term Success in Reading
00:27:24
Speaker
I don't even remember what I was talking about before this. Oh my goodness. What was the point? I have no idea. I lost my train of thought. This is why probably you should have a script to follow if you're doing a podcast, but that's just not how I do it.
00:27:37
Speaker
So anyway, that's why we teach orthographic mapping, open and closed syllables, all the things. um But it's really important to lay that foundation. And it really feels um tricky at first, and it feels tedious and long, but we're we're laying the foundation to be able to read any word or write any word because we have a really strong foundation here. So just like think about working out, you you don't wanna just go at it. Like if you don't know how to lift weights and you just jump in with, you know, a hundred pounds, it doesn't really make sense. So if we're just teaching kids who don't really know how to decode and can't really name the process that they're doing, you know, if they like see a word because, but they can't even really write the word
00:28:25
Speaker
friend phonetically, but they can spell because because they've just memorized it, that's not really a reading skill. So it's kind of like we're we're jumping in and we're we're holding really heavy weights, but we don't have the proper form.
00:28:41
Speaker
So you might be able to do it for a little while, but you're going to get hurt eventually because you haven't trained. You might be able to run a couple miles in a marathon and be so proud of yourself, but you're going to be in a lot of pain later and you might not be able to finish if you haven't properly trained. so You're learning to read muscles work just like you're working out muscles and you're learning to do anything else muscles. They need the foundations. And if we have strong foundations, then they're unstoppable.
00:29:09
Speaker
So don't skip the foundations, even if it feels tedious, even if it feels like your child doesn't need it, even if it feels like, oh my gosh, this is a lot of work. I'm here to tell you, i have been on the other side of tens of thousands of kids and teachers and parents who whether it's in schools in the United States, in Canada, in Turkey,
00:29:30
Speaker
it's it whether it's a daycare, whether it's one-on-one clients, I am here to tell you the foundations matter more than anything.
Preview of Next Episode: Writing and Spelling
00:29:41
Speaker
Take my word for it. do not get um do not skip this and do not just have your child memorize a word. Next time we talk, we're going to be talking about writing because so many of you have been asking about um what to say when your child asks how to spell a word. we're going to be talking about writing next in the next episode. And I can't wait to dive in with you.