Sight Word Bags

My PLC (professional learning community, does anyone else have to do those?) has set a goal to make sure even our lowest kiddos are proficient in reading sight words. I thought I would share the strategy we decided on.

To accomplish this goal, we are trying take-home sight word bags. We sent them home with an excerpt from a Snoopy comic about reading and call them "Snoopy's Word Bags" to try to make it more fun for the students.

It's a pretty basic concept-everyone has sent home sight word flashcards with their students before. These word bags differ in that the the students bring them to and from school every night. An adult in our classroom (either a parent volunteer or me) pulls each student aside to read through their words every day. When they have mastered all of the kindergarten list, I "retire" the easiest words, and add in 2-3 new "first grade words" at a time.


For my most advanced few students, I just threw all of the first grade words in the bag with a note to parents about the few words that they don't know. I don't think that flashcards are the most effective way to teach kids who are already reading pretty fluently, but I know that these kiddos think that flashcards are fun and would feel left out if they didn't get any:).

Pictured are the first third of our district's 1st grade words.

To keep the flashcards readily available to add into the word bags, I devised a flashcard binder (really just baseball card pockets). I copied class sets of all of the kindergarten and first grade words, and viola- flashcard binder was born!