Defining and Assessing Sight Vocabulary

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Any word can be a sight word for an individual student. Those words that she can say instantly, without applying any form of word analysis, are in her sight vocabulary.

Some students’ sight vocabularies are not at their grade level. These students may need some form of direct intervention to help bring their sight vocabulary up to grade level. In advancing from grade to grade, students should increase their sight vocabularies at each grade level. Students’ sight vocabularies are not up to grade level unless they can correctly pronounce 95% of the words in books written at their grade level. Students who have not mastered an adequate number of sight words are greatly handicapped because they must analyze many more words than normal readers.

A special set of words that are expected to become part of every student’s sight vocabulary are called basic sight words. Basic sight words are words that occur frequently in most material students encounter. There are several lists of the common or basic sight words. Because these words appear frequently, it is essential that students recognize them instantly. If students do not have these words in their sight vocabulary, or cannot recognize them instantly, they cannot become fluent readers. Students often confuse certain basic sight words, especially those with similar beginnings, such as when, where, and what or this, that, and those.

Assessing Sight Vocabulary

The method of determining if a word is in a student’s sight vocabulary is to show the student the word for less than one second. The student is expected to say what the word is as soon as she sees it. This can be done by covering the word with a card, moving the card so the word is exposed for a brief moment and then covering the word again. This covering and uncovering of the word is known as flashing the word. When you are assessing sight words, it is important to expose the word to the student for a limited amount of time. A quick showing of the word for a second or less is desirable so that the reader is not using phonics or structural analysis to decode the word.

If during a lesson you want to know if a specific word is in the student’s sight vocabulary, write the word on the board or a piece of paper and quickly flash the word to the student. If she can instantly tell you what the word is, it is part of her sight vocabulary.

Graded word lists are used to determine the overall level of a student’s sight vocabulary. These lists contain words that have been determined to be commonly used at a specific grade level. The lists usually begin at the preprimer (PP) level and move up in grade level to sixth grade. Some lists cover more grade levels, going to the 8th or even 12th grade. By flashing the words on the graded lists moving from the lowest grade level to higher grade levels, you will reach a point where the student is no longer able to read most of the words. The last level where the student can successfully read most of the words on the list is that student’s overall sight word level. It is reported as a grade level. For example, a child reading most of the words on the fourth grade level list but not able to read many of the words on the fifth grade level list would be reported as having a strong sight vocabulary through the fourth grade level.