Heidi's Sight Word Songs

The Experiment

As my first post I would like to explain a little about my experiment that I am doing this year with reading. Note that things that work in my classroom might not work completely for others because, as we all know, every class is different. Things that work for my class this year may not work next year. It all depends  on your students.

The reason I am analyzing and changing the way I teach reading is because students are expected to achieve such high standards that are not always developmentally appropriate, but we must do so either way. I began by doing some reading about how the brain works and what helps students to learn best. What I learned was when a person uses multiple areas of the brain at one time learning is more likely to be achieved. What does that even mean? Well to put it simply, the more ways it is taught the higher percentage of information is absorbed (i.e. hearing, saying, moving, feeling, seeing).

I decided to start with sight words, because these tend to be the hardest part of beginning reading. I searched all over google, youtube, pintrest, you name it and I finally found what I was looking for: Heidi's Sight Word Songs.

These songs had everything I was looking for to help my students. The songs start out by showing the word then it sings a song to go along with the sight word. But it is a little more complex than that. In the songs themselves the students are spelling the sight word and using it in a sentence. At the end of the song it shows the word again and on top of everything the songs are less than a minute long! Talk about a time saver.

This all sounded too good to be true, so I tested it out last year with my students to see how they would respond to the songs. They loved them and I kicked myself for not discovering this earlier in the year. So I decided to come up with a plan to use them this year with my students with other techniques to aid in the learning.

The Plan

This year I began by introducing the songs to the students without the DVDs and just showed them the motions to the song and showed the word. My school uses Journey's as our curriculum so I started by following the order that the books have. I found out rather quickly that the students were learning the words too quickly and needed more words to challenge their little brains.

So I began showing 3 songs a week which equals 3 sight words a week. This proved to have a good balance so the students weren't bored but they were also successful.

In order for students to reap all of the benefits of these songs, I felt that it needed to be transferable to other subjects. The easiest was writing which I also pay a lot of attention to. I used simple sentences with the easier sight words to show students how sentences should look and encouraged them to use the words we are learning in their writing (and many of them did).

I also don't believe in "down time" in the school day. Every minute should be utilized as a opportunity to learn. So whenever we have a minute or two we practice the sight word songs. Such as waiting for rotations or lunch ladies to be ready for us or even at the restroom. This helps the students practice the songs and it keeps them from getting wiggly.

A typical whole group reading lesson looked a little like this:
1. Sing and dance to the songs from last week and this week to the DVD.
2. Show flashcards of the word and have students say the word out loud.
3. I use the word in a sentence so the students understand the meaning.
4. Students trace word with fingers on the carpet (for the tactical learners).
5. Repeat with other words.
This whole process takes about 10 minutes of my whole group.

I know what you are thinking, "What?! Ten whole minutes of my already limited time in whole group?" I know, I thought that at first. I was very worried that I was taking time away from something else, but the results made me think very differently.

The Results

These "results" are only what I have collected so far this year and the only baseline I have to go off of are my students from last year and the other Kinder classes at my school.

After 3 weeks (9 words) all students had at least 5 words or more. Other classes at this time had only been exposed to 3 sight words.
After 5 weeks (15 words) all but one student had 12 words or more. Other classes at this time had been exposed to 6 sight words.
After 6 weeks (20 words) all but one student had 17 words or more. Other classes at this time had been exposed to 8 sight words.
At this time I also encouraged students to practice color and number words and added those to the list of words to assess them on.

Not only were my students able to identify these words, but they were finding them outside of the classroom (which I encourage them to do in the hallway). Even more surprising was that they were reading the sight words in books in small group without my assistance. I almost cried when I saw that they were also using the words in their writing. They were able to create sentences with different sight words and use them CORRECTLY.

It should be noted that even at this time I have students who don't know all of their letters, but those students can identify almost all of the words that have been taught.

I will continue to collect data and improve on this program. I will keep you posted!