Sight word Fun!

I have a 2nd-grade group this year that is focusing just on sight word knowledge and fluency.  We work specifically on 5 different words each week but incorporate others into our games and activities to make sure we are reviewing other words.

 This first game the kids call the smartie game.  They ask to play on an almost daily basis.   I found the original idea here and adapted it to fit out needs. I use 5 cups and write one of our weekly words on each cup.  I then hide a smartie under one of the cups and move the cups around trying to confuse the kids.  To make it a bit more difficult, I have the cups facing me while I mix them up.  Once I stop and turn the cups back around, the kids write on a white board what word they think the smartie is under. They are all very secretive about their answer.  We then lift up each cup after reading the word to find out who was right. If they get it right they get a smartie.

This is an activity that I made with one of my non-verbal students in mind.  Trains are of high interest so I used train clipart and put the words on each car.  I then call out a word and the student moves the Thomas the Train piece to the word.  The Thomas the train piece was something my son had lying around on the floor in the playroom and I just put it to good use. 

Another favorite activity of my students is magnifying to sight words.  They tell me that this is like detective work.  I pick out a picture of something seasonal, for example, this week I used a ground.  I then open the picture in power point and just add words to the pictures using a text box  I like to make the font a size 3 so it is super tiny.  I then give a place for the kids to write the words once they find them.  You can find lots of these already made if you do not want to make your own. 

This next activity involves using sight word videos from Heidi's songs.  If you haven't checked out Heidi's videos I highly suggest it.  I not only use the videos for sight words, but my early childhood special education kiddos love learning their letters and numbers of the week using the videos. I play the videos and the kids sing along and write the words on their white boards.  The goal of this activity is to work on spelling the words more than recognizing them (This group of kids have a particular difficulty with writing their words). 

We also play a lot of card games.  I have a bunch in my store that the kids love to play.  Their favorites are Oh Peep! and Alien's steal underpants.  In these games, the students pull out a card and read the word.  Some cards have different sayings on them (Such as Oh Peep! Or Aliens stole your underpants!) which have the students do different things like put all of their cards back or pass their cards to the right.   You can go from having the most cards to the least very quickly.  You can check out all of these games by going to this link..