If a Leap Word causes your student trouble, have your student use a light-colored crayon to circle the part of the word that doesn’t say what your student expects it to say.Leap Words are used frequently in the decodable readers.Leap Words frequently appear on the Practice Sheets.Leap Word Cards are kept behind the Review divider in your student’s Reading Review Box until your student has achieved instant recognition of the word.Several techniques are used to help your student remember the Leap Words: For example, out of the 200 words taught in All About Reading Level 1, only 11 are Leap Words. Leap Words comprise a small percentage of words taught. The frog graphic acts as a visual reminder that the words are being treated as sight words that need to be memorized. In the word again, the AI says /ĕ/, which isn’t one of its typical sounds. In the word could, the L isn’t pronounced. Here’s an example of two flashcards used to practice the Leap Words could and again. Students “leap ahead” to learn these words as sight words. Generally, these are high-frequency words that either don’t follow the normal phonetic patterns or contain phonograms that students haven’t practiced yet. In All About Reading, we call them Leap Words. Some programs call these “Red Words,” “Outlaw Words,” “Sight Words,” or “Watch-Out” words. But there are some words that do need to be memorized. Even the Dolch Sight Word list is mostly decodable ( video). The vast majority of words don’t need to be taught by rote memorization. Ideally, we want reading to become as effortless and unconscious as breathing.īut what about words that aren’t as easily decoded? How should those words be taught? Some Words Need to Be Learned Through Rote Memorization We want children to develop automaticity when reading, so they don’t even have to think about decoding words-they just automatically know the words. (Download this PDF if you want to try this experiment with your family and friends!)Īs explained in the short video above, the Stroop effect 1 shows that word recognition can be even more automatic than something as basic as color recognition. Even before they’ve realized that they are looking at the word, they’ve unconsciously read it. Now that we’ve settled on the definition for sight words as “any words that can be read instantly, without conscious attention,” that may lead some people to wonder how fast is “instant”? And that’s a great question!īasically, we want kids to see a word and be unable to not read it. In this article, you’ll find out how to minimize the number of sight words that your child needs to memorize, while maximizing his ability to successfully master these words. So now you can see why sight words can cause so much angst! Educators have conflicting ideas about sight words and how to teach them, and in large part that stems from having different definitions for what sight words are. (Many educators believe that the words on these lists must be learned through rote memorization, but we bust that myth in this video.)
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