Phonics or Sight Words? Teaching Kids to Read

So which is it? Phonics or sight words? This is how some approach the art of teaching reading. It’s got to be one OR the other. But if you’ve read my blog for very long, you already know my answer. And you also know that I’m setting you up by asking the question with an or in the middle of it. 🙂

Undoubtedly, my answer to the question is BOTH, with a high dose of naturally immersing and integrating it into your day, such reading (everything) together, pointing out letters, words, and phonics patterns, singing, playing with sounds in words, watching educational shows, playing educational games; multiple and meaningful exposure is what I like call it.

Why Phonics?

The English language is based on the alphabetic principal. Letters make sounds, certain combinations of letters make sounds, etc. And these letter patterns/combinations are more reliable than you think if you study them closely. Word study is a great way to help kids understand the logic (or “rules”, if you’d like) of these patterns. The goal of any spelling or phonics program should be to help kids “crack the code” and apply the “codes”  in other words as they read and spell. Programs that focus on learning words by sight only unfortunately ignore the “code” of our language; that our language is indeed alphabetic.

Phonics begins with making letter-sound associations. Without this basic knowledge of letters and their corresponding sounds, learning words would be quite a futile task for most, if not all, children. In my post, Sight Words: When they Just Don’t “Stick”, I talk more about how kids develop through word learning and when the best time is to introduce the idea of sight words to kids.

Why Sight Words?

There are some words that appear with enough frequency in a child’s “diet” of reading and writing that we want her to know them by sight. We call these sight words. Instead of stopping each time to figure out the word using decoding skills (sounding it out or finding word patterns, such as ow), we want the word to become automatic; to be read within one second of seeing it. This DOES NOT mean, however, that phonics cannot come into play, too. It most certainly helps a young reader to understand that she can sound out did; that she can apply her phonics knowledge to the word and read it. But note also that there are some sight words young readers cannot figure out through phonics alone (the, was, and of are just a few).

Two common lists of sight words are Dolch’s word list and Fry’s word lists. Both lists include words that are most commonly found in independent readers for kids, starting in early Kindergarten. Personally, I like Fry’s list better (it’s more comprehensive), but NOTE THIS: ANY word came be a sight word for a child if she knows it by sight, even her name. If a child knows the word by sight, it is a sight word for that child. Sight words typically become automatic when a child has had multiple and meaningful exposure to the word (it goes back to integrating and immersing your kids into words everyday through reading, writing, playing, etc.)

Why BOTH Sight Words and Phonics?

If you’re a math person, allow me to venture here for a moment. When we first teach young children their math facts (4+4=8 and such), we start by pulling out the manipulatives, showing them in concrete ways how 4 of this plus 4 of that equals 8. We want children to understand how the math fact works (the nuts and bolts, if you please). We want them to have the ability to solve different problems by showing us HOW they did it.

But as young children become older children, we want them to move past using, or even needing, those manipulatives to solve 4+4=8. We want their basic math facts to become locked in their memory. Automatic. While they could still show us HOW they got their answer, it isn’t so necessary anymore. As a matter of fact, if the basic math facts do not become automatic, it could potentially hinder further growth in math. It’s the same with phonics and sight words. We want readers to understand the nuts and bolts of decoding words (phonics). I would even propose that the reason we teach phonics by studying word features is to help words stick better into memory for reading AND spelling. But if we stop at phonics and do not help readers use that knowledge to move words into memory, I believe we are doing them a disservice; for if readers have to stop at many words in a text to sound them out or find patterns they know, growth in their reading could be greatly hindered, especially fluency and comprehension. They need to have words, especially the most common words, locked in memory. Automatic.

 Two Things to Keep in Mind:

1. While we want to pull words out of context (away from actual reading) to study them, analyze them, and play with them, we want to be sure we are always bringing them back to REAL reading and REAL writing.
2. Some kids need explicit and systematic phonics instruction (and still struggle to “get it”) while other kids seem to completely unlock the “code” of language by themselves (even as a 3 year old)! All kids are different and they all learn at their own pace.

 

More Resources:

• My ebook, Teaching Kids to Spell: A Developmental Approach to Spelling, gives lots of hands-on and developmentally appropriate ideas for teaching kids to study words (both with phonics and sight words).
• Phonics vs. Sight Words {from Stories and Children}
• The Teaching of Sight Words {Part 1 and Part 2}
• When Sight Words Just Don’t “Stick”
• Helping Spellers Develop Phonics Generalizations
• Teaching Spelling Through Word Study {10 day series}

Follow This Reading Mama’s board Sight Words on Pinterest.

Follow This Reading Mama’s board Word Study/Phonics on Pinterest. Follow This Reading Mama’s board Hands-On Spelling Ideas on Pinterest.

 

 

Enjoy!

~Becky