The Perils of Teaching Sight Words to Kids
Think Again if You Plan on Teaching Your Child / Student to Read Using Sight Words
If yelling at the top of my lungs could stop parents and teachers from teaching reading using sight words, I would. Teaching children to read using sight words causes far more problems than anyone care to admit, and if we were to pin the blame of poor reading skills development in children and adults today, it would fall squarely on the teaching of sight words! Nothing causes more reading problems than whole language learning. I've discussed why you should not teach reading using sight words here, so I won't go in more details about that. Instead, I'm going to share a very specific example that really highlights the perils of teaching sight words.
I work with children of all ages, mostly between 3 years up to 8 and 9 years of age. All of the older Gr. 1 - 3 students I teach are far behind in reading, and the prevailing theme is that all of these students were taught to read through the whole language learning method at school/home. When children are taught sight words, their only natural response is learning through the memorization of word shapes without ever really understanding why words sound the way they do and how English works as an alphabetic language.
The Confusion of Word Shapes
The problem of teaching sight words is that there are SO many words with similar shapes, and this is what leads to confusion, frustration, and reading problems! I do a few different assessments when I get new students, and I have a "special" passage to read for all of my older students, usually the Gr 2 and 3 students. Below is the short passage that I wrote to show parents firsthand what sight reading does to students. Please read it carefully.
Dad has a farm. On his farm, dad has a big red barn. In the big red born, dad has a pig, a cow, and a sheep.
The mommy pig just had a baby pig, and a new baby pig was barn in dad's big red burn.?
Dad is very happy about his farm and his big red barn.
Did you catch anything wrong with that passage? There are 3 intended "errors". Can you spot them? Here's the passage again, with the "errors" are highlighted in bold.
Dad has a farm. On his farm, dad has a big red barn. In the big red born, dad has a pig, a cow, and a sheep.
The mommy pig just had a baby pig, and a new baby pig was barn in dad's big red burn.?
Dad is very happy about his farm and his big red barn.
When the students (that rely on sight words) read this passage, if they were able to read most of it, they would read it without noticing any of the errors. Instead of reading the incorrect (highlighted) words, the students would read the passage as if it had no errors like so:
Dad has a farm. On his farm, dad has a big red barn. In the big red barn, dad has a pig, a cow, and a sheep.
The mommy pig just had a baby pig, and a new baby pig was born in dad's big red barn.?
Dad is very happy about his farm and his big red barn.
These poor readers simply did not have the ability or the knowledge to recognize the differences between the 3 words:
- barn
- born
- burn
To them, these 3 words were one and the same. They automatically "corrected" the errors based on the context - showing no recognition for the minor nuances which differentiate these 3 words. Parents are always very surprised when they see their child read through the above passage, and this clearly demonstrates to them the problems associated with learning sight words.
When I have good phonetic readers read through the passage, they will always catch and point out the 3 errors. Rarely does a good phonetic reader miss one of the errors. With good readers, they see and recognize what makes the 3 words different from one another:
- barn - /b/ /ar/ /n/
- born - /b/ /or/ /n/
- burn - /b/ /ur/ /n/
This is not something readers that rely on memorizing sight words are capable of.
This simple passage is a clear demonstration of the problems associated with sight words memorization. When you teach a child to read using sight words, the only logical response is that the child will resort to memorizing the word shapes, and this is what causes reading problems. I hope that this simple exercise has made you more aware of the perils of teaching reading using sight words, and you are welcome to use my passage above with your children or students.