Teach Her Tuesday: Dolch Words for First Grade
The kiddo was tested at the beginning of the school year and is reading at first grade level. Woohoo! I stay collecting information and lists and lined papers, match up games, you name it! Anything to feed her mind while she is at home. Last year I started a Get Schooled board but this year I've supplemented it with a Kindergarten and First Grade board.
I'm a firm believer that we are our children's first teachers and so I try to have as much on-hand as I can. Because I'm not a teacher, I have to make it up as I go and find resources on the interwebs (thank you Pinterest!).
I'm not inventing anything new. Between amazing home school moms and terrific teachers that are super dedicated to making sure that kids everywhere have access to tools that work, I think I'm covered.
But, I do like sight words. In the past, I used the list of Kindergarten words provided to students in one of the local counties but I've moved on to the Dolch Word List.
This is a list of commonly used English words that was originally compiled by Edward William Dolch. He wrote a book called Problems In Reading way back in 1948.
He basically ran through the words in the children's books of the time and pulled out 220 words which he called service words which he thought children needed to recognize in order to gain reading fluency.
That's what we are about these days in this house. Fluency. We don't always use the sight words. We've been reading and talking about what we read (which is sometimes difficult because her favorite mode of exercise these days includes raising her hand while I'm in the middle of a sentence). We've also started journaling about what we read. Pictures and words are okay.
I'm getting excited, y'all. Initially, the Frog Princess wasn't about that book life and it was breaking my heart. Now that she's getting better at reading, we can't get enough of books. Somebody pinch me!!!!!
Enniweighs, sign up to get the Dolch first grade words in case you need to motivate kids to be about that reading life. I laid them out in card format so all you have to do is print and cut (if you're like me, you'll laminate as well).
What are you teaching at home? What tools are you looking for or what tools do you recommend?