All About Reading for first graders...question

Curriculum
1

For those that use AAR for younger grades, do you also teach sight words? If so, how do you introduce them?

2

I am using AAR level 1, they do use sight words they are introduced as rule breakers with a lil bad guy. They tell you when to introduce each one and they do frequent review. Hope this helps.

3

I try to make sight words fun. Last year we had a ‘sight word tree’ where each leaf had a word on it. We would read the words every day and add more as they were introduced. Each Monday was our assessment: the words that were read correctly were moved to a ’ mastered tree’. This is great because he could see how much he learned as the mastered tree collected leaves. We would review the words a few times a month, and if he missed one, we would just move it back to ‘the working tree.’

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4

You really don’t need to. Most “sight” words are actually phonetic, and AAR covers these plus true sight words. Check out this blog article/video on teaching the Dolch sight words.

5

sight words are introduced as part of the curriculum and periodically reviewed.

6

This is something that I’ve struggled with all year as my daughter finishes up Level 1. My biggest frustration was that I couldn’t just go out and buy her readers, because the only readers that are geared to AAR are the ones that come with it. It’s a completely different method of teaching reading than what is used in public schools, however, I feel that it lays a solid foundation for reading. The rule breakers are introduced gradually, and many “sight words” are introduced just as normal words that can be sounded out. You can certainly add in a sight words program if you’d like to, but once I let go and relaxed and trusted in the program, my stress levels went down, we started moving faster through the program, and now we’re almost ready for Level 2.

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