Sight word what

What Are Sight Words? Get the Definition Plus Teaching Resources

When you’re a new teacher, the number of buzzwords that you have to master seems overwhelming at times. You’ve probably heard about many concepts, but you may not be entirely sure what they are or how to use them in your classroom. For example, new teacher Katy B. asks, “This seems like a really basic question, but what are sight words, and where do I find them?” No worries, Katy. We have you covered!

What’s the difference between sight words and high-frequency words?

Oftentimes we use the terms sight words and high-frequency words interchangeably. Opinions differ, but our research shows that there is a difference. High-frequency words are words that are most commonly found in written language. Although some fit standard phonetic patterns, some do not. Sight words are a subset of high-frequency words that do not fit standard phonetic patterns and are therefore not easily decoded. 

We use both types of words consistently in spoken and written language, and they also appear in books, including textbooks, and stories. Once students learn to quickly recognize these words, reading comes more easily.

What are sight words and how can I teach my students to memorize them?

Sight words are words like come, does, or who that do not follow the rules of spelling or the six types of syllables. Decoding these words can be very difficult for young learners. The common practice has been to teach students to memorize these words as a whole, by sight, so that they can recognize them immediately (within three seconds) and read them without having to use decoding skills.

Can I teach sight words using the science of reading?

On the other hand, recent findings based on the science of reading suggests we can use strategies beyond rote memorization. According to the the science of reading, it is possible to sound out many sight words because they have recognizable patterns. Literacy specialist Susan Jones, a proponent of using the science of reading to teach sight words, recommends a method called phoneme-grapheme mapping where students first map out the sounds they hear in a word and then add graphemes (letters) they hear for each sound.

How else can I teach sight words?

There are many fun and engaging ways to teach sight words. Dozens of books on the subject have been published, including the much-revered Comprehensive Phonics, Spelling, and Word Study Guide by Fountas & Pinnell. Also, resources like games, manipulatives, and flash cards are readily available online and in stores. To help get you started, check out these Creative and Simple Sight Word Activities for the Classroom. Also, check out Susan Jones Teaching for three science-of-reading-based ideas and more.

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Where do I find sight word lists?

Two of the most popular sources are the Dolch High Frequency Words list and the Fry High Frequency Words list.

During the 1930s and 1940s, Dr. Edward Dolch developed his word list, used for pre-K through third grade, by studying the most frequently occurring words in the children’s books of that era. The list has 200 “service words” and also 95 high-frequency nouns. The Dolch word list comprises 80 percent of the words you would find in a typical children’s book and 50 percent of the words found in writing for adults.

Dr. Edward Fry developed an expanded word list for grades 1–10 in the 1950s (updated in 1980), based on the most common words that appear in reading materials used in grades 3–9. The Fry list contains the most common 1,000 words in the English language. The Fry words include 90 percent of the words found in a typical book, newspaper, or website.

Looking for more sight word activities? Check out 20 Fun Phonics Activities and Games for Early Readers.

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Teach Your Child to Read

Print your own sight words flash cards. Create a set of Dolch or Fry sight words flash cards, or use your own custom set of words.

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Follow the sight words teaching techniques. Learn research-validated and classroom-proven ways to introduce words, reinforce learning, and correct mistakes.

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Play sight words games. Make games that create fun opportunities for repetition and reinforcement of the lessons.

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Learn what phonological and phonemic awareness are and why they are the foundations of child literacy. Learn how to teach phonemic awareness to your kids.

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A sequenced curriculum of over 80 simple activities that take children from beginners to high-level phonemic awareness. Each activity includes everything you need to print and an instructional video.

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Teach phoneme and letter sounds in a way that makes blending easier and more intuitive. Includes a demonstration video and a handy reference chart.

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Sightwords.com is a comprehensive sequence of teaching activities, techniques, and materials for one of the building blocks of early child literacy. This collection of resources is designed to help teachers, parents, and caregivers teach a child how to read.  We combine the latest literacy research with decades of teaching experience to bring you the best methods of instruction to make teaching easier, more effective, and more fun.

Sight words build speed and fluency when reading. Accuracy, speed, and fluency in reading increase reading comprehension. The sight words are a collection of words that a child should learn to recognize without sounding out the letters. The sight words are both common, frequently used words and foundational words that a child can use to build a vocabulary. Combining sight words with phonics instruction increases a child’s speed and fluency in reading.

This website includes a detailed curriculum outline to give you an overview of how the individual lessons fit together. It provides detailed instructions and techniques to show you how to teach the material and how to help a child overcome common roadblocks. It also includes free teaching aids, games, and other materials that you can download and use with your lessons.

Many of the teaching techniques and games include variations for making the lesson more challenging for advanced students, easier for new or struggling students, and just different for a bit of variety. There are also plenty of opportunities, built into the lessons and games, to observe and assess the child’s retention of the sight words. We encourage you to use these opportunities to check up on the progress of your student and identify weaknesses before they become real problems.

Help us help you. We want this to be a resource that is constantly improving. So please provide us with your feedback, both the good and the bad. We want to know which lessons worked for your child, and which fell short. We encourage you to contribute your own ideas that have worked well in the home or classroom. You can communicate with us through email or simply post a response in the comments section of the relevant page.

How to determine the perfect and imperfect form of the verb?

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Harry Potter's girlfriend used the time-wheel to be in two places at the same time. Different types of verbs will help to describe the actions of Miss Granger. There are only two of them: perfect and imperfect. Let's talk about them in more detail.

Basic Definitions

First, let's remember what a verb is.

The verb is a part of speech that designates an action or state as a process and expresses this meaning using the categories of aspect, voice, mood, tense and person.

Verbs answer questions: what to do? what to do? what did you do? What did you do? what do they do? what will do?

Examples of verbs:

The form in Russian is a constant grammatical feature of verbs, which is possessed by conjugated verbs, infinitives, gerunds and participles. It shows how some action of the verb proceeds in time:

• completed and one-time (read, passed)

• unfinished and repeatable (lives, does).

What types of verbs are there in Russian:

• perfective;

• imperfect form.

Now let's find out what the perfect and imperfect form of the verb is and give examples of perfect and imperfect verbs.

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Perfective verbs

Perfective verbs in the indefinite form answer the question: what to do?

Perfective verbs have two tense forms:

In any tense form they call:

• an action that is limited by some limit;

• result, completion of an action or a separate stage.

Examples of perfective verbs:

• what did you do? sat down - past tense, the action is completed and was done once, that is, it was not repeated;

• what will they do? they will talk - the future simple tense, the action will be done and will not be repeated.

• what to do? close, pay, perform;

• what to do? identify, answer, simplify.

Perfective verbs can also denote actions that have already begun or are about to begin: I spoke, I will speak.

Imperfect verbs

Imperfect verbs in the indefinite form answer the question: what to do?

Imperfect verbs have three tense forms:

They denote:

• action in length, without indicating its limit;

• action incomplete.

In any tense form, they denote a repetitive or continuing action, without indicating whether the action has been completed.

Examples of imperfective verbs:

• what did you do? jumped - past tense, the action could be repeated several times and it is not known whether the result was achieved;

• what are they doing? they are watching - the present tense, the action continues and it is not known how long the action has been going on and how long it will continue;

• what shall I do? I will dance - the future is a difficult time, the action can be repeated and there are no signs that it will be completed.

• what to do? talk, paint, run;

• what to do? drag, go.

Imperfective verbs can also denote actions that have begun, are beginning or will begin: I looked, I look, I will light.

Now we know what questions are answered by perfective and imperfective verbs. And here is a cheat sheet to fix and learn the difference of two types:

Formation of verb types

Perfective verbs can be formed from imperfective verbs in different ways.

Ways of education:

• Adding a prefix: read - read, sit - sit up.

• Dropping suffixes: give - give, save - save.

• Replacement of suffixes: decide - decide, jump - jump.

• Replacement of suffixes and alternation of letters in the root: forgive - forgive, wither - wither.

When forming imperfective verbs, the alternation of consonants and vowels is possible at the root: be late - be late, state - state, protect - protect.

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Determine the form of the verb

If you are in doubt about how to understand what kind of verb you have: perfect or imperfect, use these methods:

Now you can easily tell your classmates how to determine the form of a verb in Russian.

Examples of pairs of perfective and imperfective verbs

Aspective pair are verbs that have a perfective and imperfective form.

Some Russian verbs have the same lexical meaning, but differ in the grammatical meaning of the form. For example: what to do? decide what to do? decide.

Such aspectual pairs differ in the way of word formation:

1. Through the suffix: throw - throw, meet - meet, offend - offend, reach - achieve, decide - decide.

2. Through the prefix: cook - cook, call - name, work - process, speak - talk, read - finish reading.

The aspectual pairs of verbs may differ:

• Stress.

  fall asleep - fall asleep, cut - cut.

• Roots.

  what to do? catch - what to do? catch;

  put - put;

  to invest - to invest;

  to take - to take;

  search - find.

The aspect of the verb may depend on the context of the sentence. For example:

• She is now (what is she doing?) sleeping with a friend. — Present tense, imperfective form.

• Tomorrow (what will she do?) she is staying with a friend. — Future tense, perfect form.

Such verbs are called two-part verbs, they include: telegraph, take possession, spend the night, injure, marry, execute, promise, use, attack and others. Two aspect verbs can denote both a complete action and an action in length.

Table of perfect and imperfect verbs

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Spelling prefixes and prefixes

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The verb aspect category is the most difficult in Russian grammar both from the point of view of scientific description and from the point of view of practical language learning (especially for foreigners). Interest in this category is explained not only by its complexity and originality, but also by the fact that in the grammatical system of the Slavic verb, aspect is the central category, which is associated with word formation and verbal semantics.

The problem of species category has been and is being studied by scientists of different schools and directions, such as Avilova N.S., Apresyan Yu.D., Bondarko A.V., Bulygina T.V., Varaksin L.A., Giro-Weber M. ., Glovinskaya M.Ya., Kozlova R.P., Moiseeva L.S., Muchnik I.P., Petrukhina E.V., Rudelev V.G., Sternin I.A., Tikhonov A.N., Sharandin A.L., Shelyakin M.A. and others, but there is still no single clear and consistent position.

Modern linguistics is characterized by close attention of linguists to the content of the language. This is due to the fact that without taking into account the semantic aspect of the language, it is impossible to deeply comprehend its nature, the laws of its functioning and development.

The verb aspect is characterized by the existence of aspect pairs, but in the theory and practice of their establishment there is a lot of controversy. Contradictory opinions about aspectual opposition concern both imperfective and perfective aspectual pairs, which allows us to interpret such verbs as go blind-go blind, scream-shout as aspect pairs and as different words.

It is generally accepted that aspect pairs are formed by way of imperfectification, perfectification and suppletivism. It is believed that the appearance of aspect correlations is a regular result of the process of imperfectification, since the verbs that make up the imperfect aspect pair have the same lexical meaning: close - close; sign - sign; throw - throw.

The qualification of species pairs formed by perfection has not received an unambiguous interpretation. So, A.N. Tikhonov [1] claims that there are pure species prefixes, which, when attached to a verb, form the perfective form of the corresponding imperfective verb on based on the identity of their lexical meaning (hide-hide) .

A. V. Bondarko[2] and L. L. Bulanin [3], on the contrary, are of the opinion that there is not a single prefix that could be called pure species. P. A. Soboleva has a different point of view [4]. She believes that prefixes contain a component of aspectual meaning and a component of derivational meaning. The derivational component varies on a scale from the full semantic load ( jump over, serve (term)) to negligible (write , do ).

Such a range of opinions is not accidental, since prefixes in the Russian language are interpartial, the vast majority of prefixes are ambiguous, often the addition of a prefix contributes to the modification of the lexical meaning of a derived word under the influence of the context ( speak - start talking; speak - tire with conversations).

Prefixed verbs make up approximately ninety percent of the total verb vocabulary. Verbal prefixes, being relatively independent morphemes, have their own paradigmatics and syntagmatics. One and the same prefix can add pure species value to one verb boil-boil the kettle , whitewash-whitewash the ceiling; o simultaneously change the form and lexical meaning of the verb - write - add - Add a few lines to the letter ; with stand - stand : - I will be able to stand up for myself if a rude person offends me, - calmly said Tanya . /V.N.Azhaev, Far from Moscow/; we will not stand up for the price; I believe - I will endure the war, I will accept a hundred wounds, but I will stand. /A.P. Nedogonov, Letter/; without changing the form, change the lexical meaning of the verb - resolve - resolve : [Dasha] decided to start an independent life as soon as possible . /A.N. Tolstoy, Sisters/; - Sit down, - the captain allowed with a careless gesture. /V.M. Sayanov, Lena buy – buy out : buy a new table ; Kostylin was redeemed only a month later [from captivity] for five thousand . /L.N. Tolstoy, Prisoner of the Caucasus/.

The fact that shaping and speciation is carried out by the same means does not indicate the blurring of boundaries between the concepts under consideration, but the polyfunctionality of linguistic means.

The aspect ratio of a verb depends on its ambiguity, and perfect speciation depends on which prefix is ​​attached to the verb. A multi-valued word has several semantic centers, and each of them can be the basis for the formation of a species pair. After analyzing the verb vocabulary in the dictionary, we can conclude that the polysemy of the verb is its main property, and the exceptions are those verbs that have only one meaning (burr, ground). Polysemantic verbs enter into aspectual relations not as a single whole, but as a combination of, although very close, but still different lexical meanings.

In different meanings of the verb, aspectual opposition manifests itself in different ways. For example, the verb to beat in the meaning of “to strike” forms the perfect form with the help of the prefix on- (to beat - to beat the dog ), and in the meaning of “to make a sound” - with the help of pro- ( the clock strikes - struck midnight ), but in the meaning of “hit, knock on something” (beat on the door ), the verb beat does not have a correlative perfect form. The verb z to join in the structure of its meaning has 2 LSV, but in each of them it makes up special aspect pairs : introduce - introduce a friend to his brother . And to acquaint - to acquaint the employee with the order.

A prefix that is attached to a verb in one sense may not be combined with it when it expresses another meaning. For example, a verb with incline in the value incline branches can be combined with prefixes at-, on - , but it does not combine with the above prefixes in the value incline to escape ; in the meaning of to throw the ball into the basket the verb to throw is combined with the prefixes in-, re-, with-, from- , etc., but in the meaning of to abandon studies education other prefix forms are not possible. The influence of the prefix does not extend to the entire polysemantic word, but to its lexico-semantic variants.

Thus, each verb as a unit of the lexical system has its own semantic volume, different from other words; it is a complex semantic system with unique individual features.

Most words, including verbal ones, are a complex semantic whole, being unique structures consisting of hierarchically organized lexico-semantic variants, in other words, they are polysemantic lexemes.

Each LSV in the structure of the meaning of a polysemantic word has its own connections and relationships in the system, which are manifested both in paradigmatics, syntagmatics, and in word formation. We can talk about species correlation precisely in relation to individual meanings of a polysemantic verb.

There are no reliable criteria for distinguishing pure-speech and lexical prefixes. Almost all prefixes are used in the "pure species" meaning, their grammatical meaning is combined with derivational meanings, prefixes are characterized to varying degrees by the ability to express the meaning of the species.

The speciation of verbs becomes more complicated depending on how many lexico-semantic variants are included in the structure of a polysemantic word. The more complex the semantic structure of the verb word, the more complex the model for the formation of aspectual oppositions within each verb. The more LSV is found when considering the verb, the more extensive the connections of words, the more subtypes of speciation. Polysemantic verbs enter into aspectual relations not as a single entity, but as a combination of, although very close, but still different lexical meanings.

Until now, the task of identifying the patterns of formation of aspect ratios, grouping verbs according to types of aspect ratio remains relevant. Only in this case it is possible to reflect more fully and accurately all the complexity and diversity of the structures of the lexical meaning of the verbal lexeme, which regulates such contradictory and diverse aspectual relations, and this is extremely important for a comprehensive and deep understanding of one of the most important categories of the Russian verb - the category of aspect.

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