When teaching kids English, you need to always start with the basics. What are the basics of learning English? Is sentence formation the basis of learning English? Well, yes. But kids also need to understand what they read in books or listen to. Of course, it does not happen overnight. But sight words are something that can come to your rescue.
Simply because if you look at the sight words examples, you can see that sight words for kids do not have any image. They are just words that kids need to recognise and remember. In simple words, sight words help kids understand the text they read.
Sight words for kids
What are the sight words? To understand how sight words work, sight words' meaning is very important. Sight words’ sentences are very common. They appear very frequently in every text. Though these words do not provide any particular image like others, they have high frequency, so readers need to memorise the words after seeing them.
For example, if you read the word ‘bright’ on a page, you can automatically get an image that talks about something clear and shiny.
So, what are sight words? The words like ‘I’, ‘and’, ‘or’, ‘a’ are the sight words. You can understand their contribution if you ask your kids to read at least a page daily. By learning the sight words, kids gain confidence in reading and understanding the sentences of an unknown text. The sight words have some characteristics, which are as follows:
You can see sight words’ examples very often in a text. You can see them in every line of text.
There is a huge sight words list, and if you follow the list, you can see that the sight words do not follow the traditional way of spelling. This means their sounds do not match up with their letters.
Imagine the sight words’ sentences. Try to find ‘the’, ‘or’, ‘and’ in a sentence. Can you form a concrete image of these words? No right? Because as we have said before, these words do not carry any image with them like the rest.
Whether you follow sight words for kids or sight words' meaning, you can see that adjectives, common verbs, and conjunctions are commonly used as sight words. These words help convey a special meaning of the sentence despite carrying no special meaning individually.
There are at least 300 sight words in the English language. However, if your children are beginners, they will most likely deal with 100 sight words in whatever text they read or write.
A: an, are, and, about, after.
B: But, been.
C: Called, could, can.
D: Down, done, did.
F: From, form, for, first.
H: He, his, had, have.
I: In, is, it.
K: Know
L: Like
M: More, many, much, may, most
N: Not, now
O: Or, out, of, other
S: Said she
T: The, these, this, then, they
U: Up
W: Was, will, would, water.
Y: Your, you, yours.
These are some basic sight words your kids can encounter while reading something.
Sight word examples
Though sight words are very common and easily found, if kids get a little help, they can learn the use of the words faster. Since sight words with sentences are very common, here are some tips that can help you to teach kids the words sooner.
The first thing you can do to teach kids how to memorise sight words is to expose them to more reading and listen to different texts daily. You can easily spend at least an hour with your kids reading something. If you keep reading them some stories daily, they can have many sight words. If you can do it multiple times every day, they are likely to hear at least 1 million or more than 1 million sight words daily.
You can also teach them the sight words on the roads or in stores. On roads, you can see signboards, and in the stores, you can see many boards writing about different products. You can ask them to read them repeatedly. This practice can help them learn sight words with sentences.
One of the best ways to teach sign words to kids is to emphasise the sentences that have sight words. When you read a story or passage to your kids, emphasise the lines and read them aloud, so they understand their meaning.
You can help them use their senses by playing with them with sign words. For example, you can provide some fill-in-the-blanks exercises on a page and ask them to fill the gaps. This is a great way to teach them what sight words are and why these words are so important to form a sentence.
Come down here
My mother is there
A blue bear
Pretty please
Little flower girl
My birthday cake
Mountains without sun
Sometimes it’s late
Upon your word
He will go up the hill.
It was a long day.
I ate an egg.
The boat has a bell.
It was a long day.
Sight words carry a lot of weight in the English language without carrying any meaning individually. In simple words, a sentence cannot form a meaning without using sight words. You can see sight words’ presence in every sentence now and then.
That is why you must teach kids the meaning of the sight words and their uses. One of the most common ways to teach kids the uses of sight words is to read them stories, poetry and different passages. This repetition can help them learn about sight words much faster.