Value Bookshop's Reading Notes

I haven’t been very consistent in teaching ‘koko D’ to read. Most of the time, he only has concentration enough to do one subject per day. The last few days I’ve been working on his maths (will blog on this later). If I do any lessons on English with him, the focus has been on phonics. And he seems to be quite good at that. He is able to do worksheets that require him to segment three letter words. Meaning, he can hear a word and identify the first sound, middle sound and last sound. And write it down with a pretty decent handwriting for a 3+ year old.

However, working on phonics does not translate to being able to read books (yet). When his sister K was at kindergarten, they started her reading by sight. Meaning, she looked at words and memorized it whole rather than trying to decode it using phonics. Of course, along the way she was also learning phonics. But learning words by sight got her started on reading and being able to read simple books built her confidence. It gave her the “I can read” attitude. I want to do the same for ‘koko D’.

So today, I decided I should start ‘koko D’ on learning some Dolch words by sight.

What are Dolch sight words?
Well, there are 220 words in all (and another list of 95 commonly used nouns). Compiled by Edward W. Dolch, these words are most frequently used words in children’s books. I believe they are sometimes also known as ‘high frequency words’. They cannot be decoded by phonics or illustrated. They have to be learned by sight.

Why learn these words?
Well, once ‘koko D’ knows these words, he will be able to read the majority of text in any book. No point flashing to him words like ‘car’, ‘ball’, ‘apple’, etc… that don’t appear in all books. I would only flash these words if they have a relation to a book we are trying to read. For example, I happen to have a book called I Am Not a Dinosaur (My First Hello Reader). ‘Koko D’ loves dinosaurs. So, I thought it would be nice if he could read this whole book on his own. The text is simple and the story is nice. It actually comes with it’s own set of flashcards but I’m going to use my own. So, not only will I have him learn Dolch words found in this book, but also the other words that make up the story.

How am I teaching the words?
It’s called Class Monster. It’s an idea I got from a book called Very Young Learners (Resource Books for Teachers)

Basically, you stick the words that you want your child to learn in the monster’s mouth. If he get’s it right, the word goes down to the stomach. When you think it is digested enough, you can take it down and hang it or keep it somewhere else.

In the book, the monster looks like this (must have big mouth and big stomach):

Here is Koko D’s monster. Since it is going to be HIS monster, I asked him what he wanted it to look like. This is what we came up with:

K also has her own monster. She is learning Bahasa Malaysia.

So far it’s got them motivated to learn the words. Let’s see if it really, really works.

p.s. If you want to print out these Dolch words, you can find them here: Sight Words For Word Walls