Early Literacy Skills and Sight Word Recognition

One of the best ways to improve early literacy skills is to allow children to make connections across a variety of texts. When a child reads the word ‘you’ in one book, but can’t remember the word when they come across it again, have the first book available to show to the child and let them know that they were able to read the word in that context. They will be able to retrieve the information they already processed earlier more quickly than trying to create meaning from the word from scratch.

A great way to reinforce memory of certain sight words that your child has come across repeatedly in various texts, but which your child still does not read fluently, is to make a memory game with the words. Write each word your child is having trouble with on a note card two times (two cards with the same word on them), then mix up all the words and put the cards face-down. Your child will have to find the pair of words that are identical, and will have to read all the cards multiple times during the game.