Teaching sight words is a contentious issue in the early childhood education field. There are many districts today that mandate the teaching of dozens of sight words in pre-k and 100 or more in kindergarten. We loved University of Virginia’s Dr. Marcia Invernezzi’s responses to the questions posed to her about sight word instruction on the “Ask a Researcher” page of the International Reading Association’s website, posted on October 9.
Her response to the question, “Should we be teaching 100 sight words to kindergarteners?” “Drilling kindergarteners with high-frequency words on flashcards is unlikely to support the development of their sight word vocabulary. In fact, it’s likely to do more harm than good.”
| Authored by Jordan Khadam-Hir, Rice University School Literacy and Culture |
