When educators hear the term “sight recognition,” they often think of a student’s ability to visually identify how to say a word without needing to decode it. But within Scarborough’s reading rope, sight recognition actually goes deeper than that. It refers to the process by which students identify the spoken word and its possible meaning in the context of the sentence. Students can work on identifying “sight words” in isolation, but the recognition comes in when they can also define these words in context.
Why is Sight Recognition Important?
Sight recognition is an important skill for students to build for two main reasons. First, it allows them to read more quickly. When they don’t have to decode as many words, their reading rate becomes faster. Secondly, when students spend less energy decoding words, they can put more energy toward comprehending what the text says. This allows them to get more out of it, and their comprehension of the text becomes stronger.
Sight Words vs. High Frequency Words
“Sight words” are any words that students have memorized by sight, and therefore don’t need to decode. Words that have irregular spelling, meaning the letter combinations don’t make typical sounds, need to be memorized since they can’t be decoded. High frequency words, on the other hand, are those that students come across often, and therefore memorize by sight in order to make the reading process faster. High frequency words may or may not follow regular spelling patterns.
Automaticity and Speed
The more automatic sight recognition becomes, the more fluent the reader. Accurate and automatic recognition of words increases a reader’s comprehension of what he or she is reading. The more decoding one needs to do, which thereby slows down the reading rate, the less they are able to actually process cognitively. Conversely, the less a reader has to focus on decoding, and the more she is able to read words with accuracy and speed, the greater her comprehension will be.
How to Help Students Develop Sight Recognition
Opportunities for practice
There are a lot of ways to help students become faster, more accurate readers. The most obvious strategy is to provide as many opportunities as possible for practice. Research shows that reading is the number one way for students to become better readers.
“Heart Words”
Heart words are a great way to help students develop sight word recognition. They are so named because they are words that students need to memorize by heart (since they can’t be decoded). Using a heart visual over irregular spelling patterns within words helps students solidify what these irregular words look like, and commit them to memory.
Sound-letter mapping
This strategy involves helping students isolate individual sounds in words, even those with irregular spelling patterns. In this activity, students place a chip or other small object in a box to represent each sound in a word. Here’s an example: for the word ‘said,’ which follows an irregular spelling pattern, students would place a chip in the first box, representing the sound for ‘s’. Then they would place a second chip in another box to represent the sound for ‘ai’. Lastly, they would place a chip in a third box to represent the sound for ‘d’. Breaking down the word like this into its individual phonemes helps reinforce these spellings to memory.
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