Teaching Sight Words with Games

Listening/Reading:
1. Bingo.
If you have Linus students in class ask them to choose three words to write down from
the board instead of the usual nine words onto the bingo grid. For other students ask
them to write nine words. The teacher (or student) calls out a word and students have
to identify that word and mark it until they get three marked words in a row/line.
2. Board Slap.
Display the sight-words on the board or on the desk for groups of students to play.
The teachers says the word and students slap the correct word.
Speaking/Reading:
3. Mingle Game.
Each student gets one sight-word card. They can walk around the room, find a friend,
read their card and then do rock-paper-scissors. The winner gets to keep the card,
and play again with another friend. The loser has to sit down and is out of the game.
Try it with two or more cards for each student if you have enough sight-word cards.
Speaking/Reading/Writing:
4. Walking Dictation.
Post a list of words in different places around the room. Put the students into groups
or pairs. One student from the group goes up to see the word and comes back and
tells the group. The group then has to write it down. Fastest group to write all of the
words is the winner.
Writing/Spelling:
5. Rainbow writing.
Have students write the sight-words in a specific colour, then have them write over the
word in another colour. Repeat this using four or five colours.
6. Look-cover-write-check.
Students can use their E1 notebooks to write, no more than eight sight-words down the
left-hand side of the page. Then foreach word, tell the students to look at it, cover wth
their hand, then write it from memory. Students look at the word again and check to
see if they got it right. Try two or three more times with the same word.