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The purpose of this project was to determine how sight word automaticity affects reading fluency. Mastering kindergarten sight words is essential to advance learning in further grade levels. It is essential for kindergarteners to be able to recognize and say all kindergarten sight words as they are the building blocks for literacy and reading for many years to come. When students enter first grade and have not mastered their kindergarten sight words, they must spend time relearning material from kindergarten instead of moving on to first grade content. If students are able to recognize and say all kindergarten sight words, it is expected that their reading fluency and reading level will increase. The purpose of this project was to implement sight word strategies to see if it had a positive impact on reading levels. The overall goal was to improve the reading levels of all of my students through the use of sight word strategies.

 

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When I first started text leveling, I could see that my students needed more strategies and skills to help them read and get them to where they should be by the end of Kindergarten. Through my assessments, my data told me that some students did not know many of their sight words, which does affect how a student reads. My data told me that I was not meeting the needs of all of my students and that I needed to do something different. I gave my students a pre-survey that told me that most were not confident when it came to reading their sight words, reading to the teacher, and reading out loud. Therefore, my qualitative data was from the pre and post survey, as well as observations made during whole group, small group, and independent work time. The quantitative data was from my text leveling and my sight word assessment. These assessments demonstrated the need for this project. In January two of my students knew 80% of their sight words. 85% of my students were reading at either a Pre-A or A reading level. These data pieces definitely told me that I needed to implement some sight word reading strategies that would hopefully have a positive impact on students.

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I felt that this problem was one of importance because my data told me that my students needed help with reading and writing sight words, improving reading levels, and utilizing reading strategies taught. Kindergartners should be at a level D by the end of the school year and I want my class to be there, as well as know their sight words. Sight word strategies will help my students when it comes to reading and retention.

 

Reading is an area where I struggled in growing up so I think that it is hard for me to teach reading as well. I feel like I struggled teaching the sight words and I did not feel confident with how I was teaching them. I wanted to be able to help my Kindergarteners learn how to read and what to do when they come to a word they do not know. After talking with my mentor and deciding what my students needed I chose to focus on improving reading levels within my classroom through the use of sight word strategies.

After I first started my reading groups, I split my students up into three different groups based on their needs, observation, and data. We started focusing on sight words and reading books from the curriculum as a group. I have taught certain reading strategies whole group. We reviewed the sight words almost everyday. In my small groups I wanted to continue to focus on sight words and reading strategies. In my work stations, I wanted my students to be involved in sight word games and activities such as, write the room.