As a 1st grade teacher, teaching sight words was always a struggle.
My first year in 1st grade, everything I was doing wasn’t working. My students came in incredibly low and after a few months, had not improved very much.
My other problem as a first grade teacher was that my students were so squirrely, they needed constant movement and then once lunch hit, forget teaching anything, the first 3 months of 1st grade because they are ready for a nap. I don’t blame them, it is a big jump moving to 1st grade. Their little brains are working so hard.
I remember one of my fist evaluations of teaching 1st grade and my admin told me that I was expecting them to sit way too long. I couldn’t believe she was giving me permission to move them around so much. I had obviously only had experience with the older ones.
So, I created a few resources to help my students with their sight word retention. One was our Sight Word Goal wall, click here a blog article about it. The other was our Interactive Sight Word PowerPoint.
I took our sight word list and put a word on each PowerPoint slide and then put an action that they needed to do. I tried to pair up the action with something that may remind them of the word. I tried it out the first time with a few words and the kids loved it, so I slowly added more words and more moves. It took me forever to make, but we used it daily, so it paid off.
Here is how it works
The teacher puts the PowerPoint up on the screen and it flashes a word and an action. For example “the” say the 2 x and trace it on your desk 3 X.
As a class you will all say the word, and the teacher reads the instructions since most of the students can’t at first. Then as a class you will do what the action says. Some of the cards have bigger actions like jumping jacks, squats and spinning. I actually get a bit of a workout in!
Since it is a PowerPoint, you can add your own words to it or change them. You can also change the order by moving the slides around. For my class, we added 5 a week. Some of the students were behind, but they still were able to participate and practice with their classmates.
We also used the Interactive Sight Words as an ELA station. We just set up the Chromebook and the students can work on the words while they are at the station.
If you use the Dolch Sight Word list we have the Kindergarten Version.
Distance Learning Use
During distance learning this was a huge hit for families to use to get their kiddos up and moving. I love to use it during our virtual meetings because I can share my screen and the kids can all say the words and do the actions in their own home. This is great for hybrid as well. If you have half the students in the classroom, they can be doing it as well as the kids at home.
If you are wanting the pre-made 1st grade PowerPoint slides CLICK BELOW for more information.
We also have a Kindergarten Version and we offer all of them in BOOM Cards and if you use the Dolch Word List, we have that version too! Here is the Kindergarten Version. Here is the 1st Grade Dolch Word Version. We have it ALL!
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