Sight Words and Word Recognition

Sight Words andWord Recognition

Reyzen B. DondiegoMAESL

SIGHT WORDS

The hallmark of skilled reading is the

ability to read individual words accurately and quickly in isolation

as well as in text, referred to as

“context free” word reading skill (Stanovich, 1980).

SIGHT WORDS

Being able to read words from memory by sight is valuable because it allows

readers to focus their attention on constructing the meaning of the text while

their eyes recognize individual words automatically (Ehri, 2004).

SIGHT WORDS

Of particular importance in developing

early reading foundation skills is

the development of sight words reading competencies (Meadan et

al. 2008).

SIGHT WORDS

Sight words are list of words that are (a) are

recognized without mediation or phonetic analysis (Browder and Lalli) (b) can be read from memory (c) include not

only high-frequency words but any word that

can be “read from memory” (Ehri)

SIGHT READING

Sight word reading is a discreet , observable response

that is controlled by printed stimulus (Browder and D’Huyvetters, 1988).

SIGHT READING

Sight word reading is not limited to high-frequency or irregularly spelled words, contrary to the beliefs of some, but

includes all words that readers can read from memory (Ehri, 2004)

SIGHT READING

Reading by sight is learning to recognize

words and read them quickly without decoding (Philips and Feng, 2012).

SIGHT READING

Students, who can retrieve words effortlessly by sight, will be able to read

text easily, with more meaning and are

capable of learning many more new words (Johnston (2000).

SIGHT READING

Sight word reading is not a strategy for reading words, contrary to some views.

Being strategic involves choosing procedures to optimize outcomes, such as figuring out unfamiliar words by decoding (Gough, 1972) or analogizing (Goswami,

1986, 1988) or prediction (Goodman, 1970; Tunmer & Chapman, 1998).

SIGHT READING

ON THE CONTRARY…..

Sight word reading happens automatically without the

influence of intention or choice.

SIGHT WORDS

DOLCH 220 LIST

FRY ‘s 1000 INSTANT WORDS

DOLCH 220 LIST

“LOOK-SAY METHOD”

“GUESS”Reading instruction should begin by teaching children to

memorize words based on their shapes (Dolch, 1941).

DOLCH 220 LIST

advocated teaching only sight words in the first grade and

waiting until the second grade to introduce phonics, if desired

(Dolch, 1941).

DOLCH 220 LIST

…is

1.contained of 220 words which does not include nouns, unless a word such as walk can be used for different parts of speech.

“Nouns cannot be of universal use because each noun is tied to special subject matter.”

-Dolch, 1936

DOLCH 220 LIST

2. first called “tool words” (1936) later

became “service words” (1941)

3. readily available sorted by grade level or frequency, although we found no indication that Dolch himself categorized his words by grade level or by frequency

DOLCH 220 LIST

“if one can read all of those words , one can read at a

third grade level” -Dolch, 1948

DOLCH NOUN LIST

DOLCH 220 LIST

The words came from….

1. The vocabulary list from the Child Study Committee of the International Kindergarten Union (1928) which listed 2,596 words found to be known by children in spoken language before entering Grade 1

DOLCH 220 LIST

2. The first 500 words on the Gate List (1926), which listed 1500 words of use for teaching Grades K-2

3. A list compiled by Wheeler and Howell (1930) with 453 words found frequently in ten primers and 10 first readers published between 1922 and 1929

DOLCH 220 LIST

193 appear in all three lists that Dolch consulted; 27 words are in

the first 510 words in the International Kindergarten Union

and in the first 500 words on Gates List

(Dolch, 1936)

Teaching Primary Reading, 1941

1. To the beginner “knowing the

words” means sight recognition . The child looks at the word form, and

the word sound comes to his mind without his knowing either how

or why


2. If the child has a stock of fifty (sight) words he can read

anything which is made of these fifty words or in which the strange

words can be guessed


3. Work with phonics used to begin with phonetic families , but we now see that such

work was an attempt go too fast. We

now start with sight words, and to help the child recognize or guess a word we ask

him how it begins

FRY’s 1000 INSTANT WORDS

Fry is widely known as on how to teach reading. On his books “The Reading Teacher’s Book of Lists

(Fry and Kress, 2006) and the “Vocabulary Teacher’s Book of Lists (Fry, 2004) are staples in

many elementary schools.

He also developed the Fry Readability Graph, a widely used tool for assessing the

readability of texts, novels and other reading materials.


He presents the words in set of five as a “reminder to only teach few

words at a time” (Fry, 2000)

Teachers should teach phonics , but leaves specifics as to how children and when

vague (Fry, 1999)


….is

1.first published a list of instant words in 1957. He revised the list in 1980 based on a more recent frequency count.

2.Composed of all parts of speech

3.listed by frequency

How to Teach Reading, 1999

2. Beginning readers need to master a high-frequency vocabulary such

as the 600 Instant Words


The words came from….The American Heritage Word Frequency

Book (Carol, Davies,and Richmond, 1971) it has 87,000 words. The American

Heritage words were compiled from 1, 045 texts representing reading

requirements and recommendations in grades 3-9 in the United States.


1. Beginning readers need to master a basic sight vocabulary of common words, for now we will define (beginning

reader) as any child or adult whose reading

ability ranges from none to upper third grade


3. An average student in an average

school situation learns most of the first 100 words toward the end of the first year. The

second hundred words are added during

the second year. It is not until in the third

year that all 300 words are really mastered

and used as part of the students’ own reading vocabulary

DOLCH vs FRY

1.The Dolch 100 List and the Fry 100 list have a combined total of

130 unique words

2.70 of 130 words are on both the Dolch 100 and the Fry 100 List

DOLCH vs FRY

3. All words on the Dolch 100 List appear on the Fry 1000 Instant Words List

4. Only 9 words on the Fry 100 list are not on the Dolch 220 List or the Dolch Noun List . The 9 words unique to the Fry 100 list are each,more, number, other, part,

people, than, way and word.

WAYS TO ASSESS SIGHT WORD READING

1. Testing readers’ ability to read irregularly spelled words under the assumption that, if these are not

known, they will be decoded phonically, resulting in errors.


2. Giving students a sight word learning task in which they practice reading a set of unfamiliar words. Readers are taught one of two phonetically equivalent

spellings (e.g., cake vs. caik) and then their memory for the particular form taught is tested. Readers might be

asked to recall the spelling or to choose among alternative spellings. Although the test is of spelling rather than reading, the correlation between the two

skills is very high, supporting the validity of spelling as an indicator.


3. Assessing word reading speed. This works because readers take less time to

read words by sight than to decode them or read them by analogy. Reading words within

one second of seeing them is taken to indicate sight word reading.

SIGHT WORDS

“Speaking is a normal, genetically-hardwired capability; reading is not. No

areas of the

brain are specialized for reading. In fact, reading is probably the most

difficult task we ask the young brain to undertake” (Sousa, 2005).

SIGHT WORDS

The appropriate response to the graphic features of the word might not be

acquired , or blocked (Hill, 1995).

SIGHT WORDS

“Some children may require additional instruction that is not tied directly to letter-sound manipulation

or phonics. In fact, for some students, the most effective reading instructional tactic may be based

on techniques that are not exclusively dependent on the alphabetic principle, but rather involve rote

memory of whole words coupled with context clues in order to determine the meaning of new words. These non-alphabetic-principle techniques, taken

together, may be thought of as sight-word instruction” (Bender & Larkin, 2003).

SIGHT WORDS

Teaching sight words to beginning

readers , less efficient learning occurs when a new word to be learned is

accompanied by related pictures (Samuel, 1967).

SIGHT WORDS

Words in Isolation VS in Sentences (context) VS with Pictures

The investigators found out that context and picture cues slowed acquisition of new word

(Singer, Samuel, Spiroff, 1973).

SIGHT WORDS

HOWEVERWhen most young children are immersed in interactions with technology every day that present multi-modal learning opportunities

(large screen tv; computer programs available in home setting s; play with electronic toys and games) (Bowman and Beyer, 1994; Jewitt, 2006; Loveless and Dore, 2002)

SIGHT WORDS

How children learn sight words is that learning is enhanced when pictures are

paired with words to be learned (Goodman, 1965).

SIGHT WORDS

Pictures are introduced, not to supplant the print but to provide one additional source of

information from which the beginner can sample as he reads. Increasing the amount of available information through the medium of pictures is shown to have a strong facilitative

effect on word identification in context in a smaller , though significant, facilitative effect

on world learning (Denberg, 1976-1977)

SIGHT WORDS

Samuel’s theory appears to be preferable as a model for teaching non-readers of normal ability. In comparing typical children to those

with Down Syndrome and reading disabilities , sight vocabulary was observed

to be learned most efficiently by all participants when the target word was

presented in isolation. (Hill,1995)

SIGHT WORDS

For young children identified as being “at risk” teaching sight word recognition may require explicit skill instruction on the part of the education professionals (Ehri, 2005; Lee and Vail, 2005; Stahl,

Mckena and Pagnucco, 1994)

WORD RECOGNITION

facilitation (faster recognition)

or

interference (slower recognition)

WORD RECOGNITION

Three processing clusters in the reading process

1.Visual information processing (converting print into linguistic information)

2. Cognitive processing (integrating segmental information in text)

3.3. Metacognitive processing (relating the textual information to prior knowledge) (Miller, 1988)

WORD RECOGNITION

Model #1: Word Shape

The general idea is that we see words as a complete patterns rather than the sum of letter parts. James Cattell (1886) was the

first psychologist to propose this as a model of word recognition. Some claim that the

information used to recognize a word is the pattern of ascending, descending, and

neutral characters.

WORD RECOGNITION

Model #2: Serial Letter RecognitionThe shortest lived model of word recognition is that words are read letter-by-letter serially from left to right. Gough (1972) proposed this model because it was easy to understand, and far more testable

than the word shape model of reading. In essence, recognizing a word in the mental lexicon was

analogous to looking up a word in a dictionary. You start off by finding the first letter, than the

second, and so on until you recognize the word.

WORD RECOGNITION

Model #3: Parallel Letter Recognition

This model says that the letters within a word are recognized simultaneously, and the letter information is used to

recognize the words.

Important Elements of Phonicsand Word Recognition Instruction

1. Print Awareness—awareness of the forms and functions of printed language.

2. Alphabetic Knowledge—knowledge of the shapes and names of letters of the alphabet.

3. Phonological and Phonemic Awareness—awareness of and the ability to manipulate the sounds of spoken English words.


4. The Alphabetic Principle—understanding that there is a systematic relationship between the sounds of spoken English and the letters and letter patterns of written English.

5. Decoding—understanding how to read each letter or letter pattern in a word to

determine the word’s meaning.


6. Irregular/High-Frequency Words—recognition of words that appear often in printed English, but are not readily decodable in the early stages of reading instruction.

7. Spelling and Writing—understanding how to translate sound-letter relationships and spelling patterns into written communication.


8. Reading Practice with Decodable Texts—application of information about soundletter relationships to the reading of readily decodable texts.

9. Reading Fluency—practice in reading a variety of texts so that reading becomes easy, accurate, and expressive.

Guidelines for Addressing Word-Identification Strategies

A beginning reading program should include…

1. Opportunities to practice word recognition, including words with newly

introduced sound-letter relations or word parts mixed with previously learned words.


2. Opportunities for children to learn to use word order (syntax) and word meaning

(semantics) to confirm the words identified through word-recognition strategies (Adams,

1998).


3. A limited set of sight words (some of which are regularly spelled) in the beginning

stages of reading instruction.

4. Phonetically irregular words in a reasonable order and review the words

cumulatively.


5. Phonetically irregular words in the written materials the students read.

6. Opportunities for children not only to decode words but also to access the words'

meanings.


7. Strategies for identifying words with

more than one syllable.

References

Ehri, L. C. (2004). Development of Sight Word Reading: Phases and Findings

Meadan, H. Stoner, J. B. Parette, H. P. (2008). Guidelines for Examining Phonics & Word Recognition. Fall 2008, Vol. 5, Num. 1

Texas Education Agency. (2002). Guidelines for Examining Phonics & Word Recognition

Sight Words and Word Recognition

Education

Transcript of Sight Words and Word Recognition