Word Work

Before moving on to our first grade words, we are reviewing all the words we learned in kindergarten to put on our word wall.  To help familiarize ourselves with these words again, we have been playing games to remember how to read and write them without help from a fluent reader.  We call these word wall words or sight words - meaning you can read them on sight rather have to stretch them out.

Here we are playing a dice game where we rolled a dice and wrote the word that matched that number of dots.  We played to see which word would "win," and was rolled the most times.

Word Wall words that we have been reviewing are:

am                   in                       be                         is
did                  on                      do                         we
for                   he                      a                           and
I                      the                     see                        like
go                    to                      my                         me

We will be reviewing 10 more this week.  If your child is struggling with reading these words on sight, my favorite ways to practice them are with flashcards and magnetic letters.

Games to try:

Mix It, Fix It (with magnetic letters) - give them the letters they need to spell a word and have them mix them up and put them back together.  See if they can do it faster each time.  They can even race you!  When they become really good at a word, throw in a couple of extra letters they don't need to see if they can pull the word out of the pile.  And of course, you can't forget the mixing chant...

"Mix it, mix it, then we're going to fix it!  Mix it, mix it, go ahead and fix it!"

Slap It! (with flash cards) - place flashcards with the words you are reviewing face up on the table.  When you call out a word, the first person to slap the card gets to put it in their pile.  The reader with the biggest pile of words at the end is the winner!

Good luck, readers!