Sight words – My first student for 2019 (Part 2)

Yesterday was the 7^th lesson for my first student,Emmanuel,  for 2019. He has now memorised 57 sight words and has been taught to read many words using phonics. Listen to the 2 YouTube videos below.

People with vested interest keep saying that dyslexic kids are unable to memorise sight words but I have successfully taught all my students to memorise sight words. All of us have memorised sight words as many of the sight words are not decodable using phonics.

Here is a sample of websites out of hundreds that talk about dyslexics having difficulty learning sight words.

Kids with dyslexia can have extra difficulty learning sight words. Some of these words don’t follow standard spelling rules, so they’re not decodable. Others appear so often that kids have to recognize them quickly to be fluent readers.

As we’ve talked before, people with dyslexia can be taught to read with the right methods.  Rote memorization is definitely not one ofthose methods!

First I will explain the method in detail and then I have included a short video with my 7-year old son, Ben, demonstrating how we study sight words at home.  I should note that until we discovered this method (with many thanks to my teachers at the Dyslexia Training Institute) Ben was unable to learn any sight words even after many weeks of effort.  Once we started this method, he not only learned his sight words easily, he enjoyed learning them as well!

Many people assume that dyslexia is a visual problem, in which the brain misinterprets what the eyes see. But research has shown that in most cases, dyslexia is an auditory problem. In those situations our Phonemic Awareness curriculum can help a great deal in giving these children the help they need to get ready for learning to read.

There are hundreds of such sites promoting their wares.

Here are the YouTube Videos I took of my student reading out the sight words he has learned to memorise and him reading random sentences from lessons he has learned. These are after my 7^th lesson.

YouTube of Emmanuel reading 57 sight words after the 7th lesson.

                    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Y88FlxjFJI

YouTube video of Emmanuel reading a few random sentences from his lessons.

                    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXwoN9nsoBg