Teaching sight words as wholes

Here is a Twitter exchange between Elizabeth Brown and me on 11.7.2023. This discussion would not have happened if she had read the links in my post here.  I wrote that post after a Twitter discussion with her, more than a year ago, on a similar matter on 5.3.2022.

I have several posts on my blog on how to teach kids to memorise the Dolch words. Any educators with a little common sense will realise that memorising 220 words that makeup between 50 to 70 percent of all the words in a kid’s book should be encouraged. 

All these educators who are against memorising the Dolch words talk about visual memory as if English is a pictorial/ ideograph language when it is not.

Ask a kid to memorise 5 Dolch words a day by rote memory and he will do it. Let me give an example I have given in my book. To memorise the word ‘with’ just ask the kid to say w-i-t-h and then the word ‘with’, repeat it 5 times. Then move to the next word and do the same. In less than 4 months he will be able to not only read but spell 50 to 70 percent of the words in his book. Isn’t it stupid to say not to memorise these high-frequency words?

Which clown came up with flashcards to learn these words as whole words by visual memory. Read the other educators who think that kids learn HFW’s by visual memory.  LINK.

Here is another one of Elizabeth Brown’s Tweet.

They (Dolch words) are sent home to be learned without the phonics necessary to teach them, parents are instructed to have their children memorize them by sight.

Why is phonics necessary to memorise the 220 Dolch words? As I have mentioned several times, I teach phonics, Dolch words memorisation, context clues and how to decipher new words. Why can’t we use all the tools available?

The following are the Tweets between Elizabeth Brown and me on 11.7.2023.

Luqman Michel

@luqmanmichel Replying to @PhonicsMom @ReadingForum_Ed and @GSquadClassroom 11.7.23

Herein lies the problem. Many teachers have been using flash cards to memorise words in English which is not a pictorial or ideograph language.

 

Elizabeth Brown @PhonicsMom

They are sent home to be learned without the phonics necessary to teach them, parents are instructed to have their children memorize them by sight.

The worst guessers, the hardest to undo their guessing habits, came from schools that taught sight words as wholes and then did speed drills with them.

The guessing habit is hard to break. With the sight words taught as wholes and other problems that cause guessing from 3 cuing and predictable leveled readers as explained in Emily Hanford's "At a Loss for Words", students guess.

 

Luqman Michel

You don't need phonics to teach the Dolch words. They can be easily memorised by any kid if taught correctly.

If 50 to 70 % of kid’s books consist of Dolch words I would teach kids to memorise them. That is how I teach the dyslexic kids who come to me for tuition.