Teaching the Dolch Sight Words

Younger students, including most beginning readers and ESL students below roughly middle school, are typically taught sight words in groups of 10 to 12. This number can be adjusted upwards or downwards based on student proficiency, classtime available, and the demands of the classroom schedule. Many teachers who see students daily prefer working on the same set of words for a week at a time (4 to 5 lessons). There is much to recommend this approach, though care should be taken to continuously integrate words the students have already learned to review them and transfer them to students' active vocabularies.

This lens introduces a model 5 day lesson plan for any arbitrary set of words. It is not the only right way to do things, but works decently well for most students and can be applied by any prospective instructor. The length of classtime to be spent on the words every week varies with student attention spans, age, and teachers' pedalogical preferences. I typically would conduct the meat of these lessons in approximately 20-30 minutes, with appropriate padding for the exigencies of teaching small children or disinterested Japanese middle schoolers. For motivated adult students on could conceivably cover all five lessons in a single sitting.

Lesson 1: Introduce concepts for the week.
Lesson 2: Spelling
Lesson 3: Reading
Lesson 4: Writing sentences
Lesson 5: Review and a bit of fun.

The first lesson introduces the words to be learned this week. The students do not have to master the words on the first day, but they should have a handle on the concepts underlying the words. One useful way is to visually demonstrate all the words for the week, via pictures, acting out, or any other visually engaging stimuli. This should be accompanied by saying the word aloud and, ideally, by showing its written representation at the same time.

There is a subtlety here: many students, including a suprising number of native English speakers, will misidentify the concept being taught if care is not taken to avoid this. Consider, for example, the word "run". This could be demonstrated by a picture of, for example, a small boy with a red shirt running on a grass field chasing a soccer ball.

That would be an extremely poor picture to use, however. It contains too many extraneous details, and does not clearly communicate the concept of "run" as a result. Some students will isolate the "red" in the shirt (this will probably be the most common misidentification for native speakers, as both start with an R sound). Others will fixate on the "boy". Still others will pick up on the aspect of "play" more than the nuance of "run".

For this reason, stylized representations of the words are preferable. This could be as simple as drawing a black and white stick figure instead of a boy, and concentrating the image on its legs being depicted in a rapid state of motion. Alternatively, the teacher could run half the length of the classroom, minimizing extraneous details like shouting or speaking while running. (Many students will laugh at the teacher running in the classroom. Hamming up action verbs keeps enthusiasm high, but take care to not distract students from the lesson.)

Not all sight words can be conveniently visually demonstrated. "a", "to", "the", and the like are obvious examples. These can be conveyed to students by repeatedly emphasizing the word in example sentences constructed using words the students already understand. Abstract words such as these often pose a particular problem with ESL speakers, particularly those whose native language does not have an analagous concept (for example, Japanese lacks a definite article, and the difference between "a" and "the" baffles even many educated Japanese, to say nothing of beginning students). There is no magical cure for these difficulties, only patience, repetition, and practice.

The second lesson returns to the previously introduced group of words. Reconnect the students with the concept of the word by, for example, briefly displaying the picture while saying the word. After students have the concept mentally fixed, put the picture away and focus on the word as a linguistic unit.

It is helpful to have a blackboard available for this lesson. Some teachers save preparation time by writing all the words for the day on the blackboard, optionally in complete (age-appropriate) sentences. I personally prefer to write only one word on the blackboard at a time, to keep student's attention focused.

Begin by modeling the word for the students. "Cat." Repeat the word, emphasizing the sounds (this step is redundant for many sight words, as most are monosyllabic and readily understood by native speakers, but I do it for consistency). "Caaaaaaaaaaattttt" Repeat the word again. "Cat."

Instruct the students that they are to now repeat after you. ("Now you try" is a common instruction in Japanese ESL classes. Personally, I prefer to keep all instructions in ESL courses in English to the maximum extent possible.) "Cat." "Now you try." *students chorus* "Good job!" Repeat.

Now work individually with students. It is not necessary to go through the entire room for every word, though that is ideal for small class sizes. The objective is to both allow other students to learn by hearing their peers and to correct pronunciation mistakes by modeling the correct pronunciation and having students repeat until they get it right. I try to keep an upbeat demeanor and have consistent responses for students who get the word exactly right, who get in the general vicinity of the word, and who do not get the word exactly right before time pressure compels me to move on ("Good job!", "Close. One more time.", "Good try. We'll work on it more later."). I also try to get students to always demonstrate the proper pronuncation twice in a row, so that they understand that the objective isn't to randomly connect sounds until the teacher looks happy but rather to consistently perform correctly.

Modeling spelling works the same as modeling pronunciation. "Cat. C, A, T." Point to the letters on the blackboard in turn. "C. A. T." "Cat. C, A, T. Now you try."

After having the students try once with the word visible, have them try again with the word not visible.

Review as time permits, in random order, at the end of the lesson.