Sight Word Sentences for Kindergarten
As students learn how to decode words using their developing phonics skills, repetition is an important part of helping them read words with automaticity. One helpful way to give students multiple and meaningful exposures to words is by using Sight Word Sentences for kindergarten phonics instruction.
Sight Words in Kindergarten
Teaching sight words in kindergarten is not just encouraging students to memorize individual words with tricky spelling patterns. Instead, it’s giving students the chance to apply their phonics knowledge to words until they can read them with automaticity.
When students can identify any word on sight, it is considered a sight word. Some of these sight words will have regular phonics patterns that students learn in kindergarten. Some sight words will have decodable patterns that students haven’t learned quite yet. Others will have irregular spellings.
For any type of sight word, an important part of the learning process is practicing these words in context. Simple sight word sentences are a great option for this!
Teaching Sight Words with Sentences
There are many reasons why sight word sentences are so important for kindergarten literacy practice. Here are just a few:
1. Add Context to Sight Word Practice
As students practice decoding individual words, sentences provide important context.
Students start by practicing the word in isolation. They decode the parts they can and then identify any tricky parts that they need to remember. You can have them mark these parts of the word with a heart.
Students can also practice writing or building the word to give them more exposure to the letter-sound patterns in the word. This is also a great time to incorporate some kinesthetic learning with letter beads or some other tactile tools!
Then it’s time to read the word within a simple sentence! It adds more meaning to the word when students can see how it is used in a sentence. This is important for reading comprehension! Plus, regularly practicing sight words within sentences will make it easier for students to identify the words with automaticity when reading longer passages.
2. Incorporate Writing Practice
Have you ever thought about the fact that reading and writing are opposite activities just like addition and subtraction? With opposite activities, working on one helps to strengthen the other. That’s why it is important to give students opportunities to work on writing and spelling sight words, too.
As students learn to recognize these words by sight, they can use this visual memory to help with their spelling. The more students write the word, the deeper they can connect that word to their long-term memory. Those repetitions make it easier for students to spell the words and also to identify them when reading.
3. Build Confidence
Building confidence is a huge part of learning how to read. When students feel like readers, they are more motivated to keep reading. Their confidence soars when they can read sight words in sentences and they’ll be eager to keep going!
Using Sight Word Sentences During Centers
Another confidence booster for kindergarten students is when they can complete reading tasks independently. This is when centers can come in handy! You can provide students with many hands-on and engaging opportunities to practice sight words independently. Here are a few tips to get sight word centers up and running in your classroom:
Step One: Choose an Activity
The first step is to choose an activity that uses sight word sentences in a way that works best for you students. Preferably, you’ll use an activity that allows students to practice multiple different skills.
Take these sentence writing strips as an example. As students complete this activity, they can practice:
- reading sight words
- blending sounds to read CVC words
- vocabulary
- letter formation and writing
- spelling sight words
- segmenting sounds to spell CVC words
- reading fluency
- proper sentence structure
With so many things to cover in a school year, activities that work on so many skills are like gold!
Step Two: Set Up the Center
To set up this center, begin by printing and laminating the sentence strips. You can punch a hole in the corner and put them on a binder ring so that they all stay together. This makes it super easy for the students to grab what they need and put them away when they are done.
You can also gather dry-erase markers, erasers, and letter tiles or magnets for students to use at this center.
Step Three: Introduce the Center
When you are introducing this center for the first time, you can demonstrate the activity in front of your class. This gives you the chance to model what the activity should look like, which is especially helpful if you are running centers with one teacher. By teaching your students the specific procedure you want them to use, you can make sure that they are making the most of their time at this sight word sentence activity.
Here’s a procedure that you could use for this activity:
- Read the sentence out loud and point at each word while reading.
- Use a dry erase marker to write the sentence.
- Use magnetic letters to spell the words in the sentence.
A procedure like this can help you support the visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learners in the classroom. However, you can easily modify the procedures for your classroom and the skills you are working on.
Step Four: Adjust the Activity
You can adjust the centers by mixing up the vowel sounds and words that students will be practicing. This gives students a chance to circle back to other phonics patterns and words that they had previously learned, which serves as a helpful review. These particular sentence strips come with 12 sentence options for each vowel sound, so there are plenty to choose from!
Printable Sight Word Centers
Would you like to incorporate more sight word sentence practice in your classroom? I have put together a set of hands-on and engaging Sight Word Centers and Activities. All of the sight word activities pictured in this post (and more!) are included in one easy-to-download resource. You can use these activities to help your students get important repetition with sight words in isolation as well as within sentences.
All of these sight word activities are low-prep and easy for students to complete independently during centers time. You can click below to take a closer look at everything included in this set of sight word centers.
Kindergarten Sight Words Centers
Save These Sight Word Sentences for Kindergarten
Be sure to save this post if you’d like to come back to it later! Just add the pin below to your favorite classroom Pinterest board. You’ll be able to quickly find this post when you’re looking for sight word sentences to use in your kindergarten classroom.
