The wonder of sight vocabulary.

We were driving around the city yesterday and passed by the food chain Jollibee, my two year old son immediately stood up, pointed at the sign and said “BEE BEE BEE”. Imagine my surprise.

There was one night we were lying down, with the television turned on. A commercial for Nestle Ice cream came on and he said “Ice cream!” and then mimicked the sound of the ice cream cart when it went around the town which sounded to me like “tenene-tenene”.

I was so amazed at how a child’s brain develops over the years and how smart they get even if they can barely speak. How they can see one thing and associate it to another. I researched on sight vocabulary and found out that:

According to the workshop Teaching Reading K2, sight vocabulary consists of words that children can identify immediately without decoding. It is an important component of word study instruction since children with a strong sight vocabulary can read more fluently and comprehend text more effectively. Beginning sight vocabulary includes words from the child's own experiences, including names of family and friends. High frequency words -- words that children encounter in texts frequently -- are the focus of sight vocabulary instruction. Children develop sight vocabulary through daily opportunities to read, repeated readings of texts, and activities using word walls.

Based on the website www.education.com, the method of determining if a word is in a student’s sight vocabulary is to show the student the word for less than one second. The student is expected to say what the word is as soon as she sees it. This can be done by covering the word with a card, moving the card so the word is exposed for a brief moment and then covering the word again. This covering and uncovering of the word is known as flashing the word. When you are assessing sight words, it is important to expose the word to the student for a limited amount of time. A quick showing of the word for a second or less is desirable so that the reader is not using phonics or structural analysis to decode the word.

It may a be a few years before he goes to school but I am sure to follow this technique to teach him more significant sight vocabulary to enhance his future ability to read. I think all of us Moms should do this.