However, some words are not fully decodable. In this case, students would need to be familiar with the R-controlled syllable type but as soon as they are familiar with that pattern the word becomes decodable. Or, if we consider the word “bird” bird is decodable if students know that “IR” says /r/. In the example provided above, the word “them” will be decodable as soon as a student learns that TH says /th/. So for example, if a student has learned that U says /u/ and S says /s/ the word “us” is decodable. There are 7 Steps to a SMARTER Research-Based Instruction Framework (we use the acronym SMARTER to help remember each of the key components!) 1 - Systematic Instruction Sight words (words that need to be learned by sight) can be taught systematicallyĪ decodable word is a word that can be sounded out with a student’s current level of knowledge. Instead, we can use a systematic framework and progression to help build a foundation for future learning while also giving students the knowledge they need to be successful at their current level.

Now that said, we don’t need to have students memorize these words.

Because they come up so often, it can be helpful to teach students these patterns a little earlier in their instructional journey. This is why sight words are also known as high-frequency words. However, there are many words that students need to know before they get to that level of progression because they come up so frequently. We talked more about this progression over here! When students are learning to read, they should be working through a progression of concepts as they’re learning to “sound out” words. The tricky thing is that students need to be taught a systematic set of rules and patterns to decode words effectively. Sight words are important because students need to have a certain level of automaticity in order to comprehend what they are reading. Basically, they are words we can read automatically without thinking about them. Sight words are words that need to be recognized by “sight” or words that we need to automatically recognize without sounding the word out.

So we are jumping in to explain what these words actually are, and what the research says about how we should be teaching them!įirst things first - What are sight words? In reading intervention we hear terms like sight words, high-frequency words, phonetically irregular words, red words, heart words, and so many other variations used every day.

Read write build sight words