Yes, that Scholastic, one of the most well known publishers of educational materials. As one example, you can see echoes of the question “Did you know about 75% of words we read are sight words?” on this Scholastic page: “ Sight Words 101“.

This misinformation about “sight words” is rather perpetuated by education publishers, self-proclaimed gurus, and consultants large and small.

She has provided clarity on what the expectations are for my son’s reading based on her experience and materials that are available to her, and provides resources for us to work with my son at home in alignment to these expectations. Locating the Source of the Problemįirst of all, let me be clear that I do not blame my son’s kindergarten teacher for this misunderstanding. So I write this post to try to clarify why this definition of sight words and the associated belief that they all must be memorized is a problem. Yet the reality is that most people-including all too many kindergarten teachers-are not aware of how this can be problematic, most especially for students who may struggle with word-level reading. The contrast between this information, and the printout from the Fundations program (an explicit, systematic, sequential Orton Gillingham based phonics program) was stark, and caused a strong reaction in me, as I knew that this information was inaccurate.

This is how the sight word overview began: We received a folder from his teacher with two sets of materials: an overview of the Fundations phonics program (good!), and a list of sight words that he would be expected to memorize each week (um). My son just entered kindergarten in our local NYC public school.

Sight words first grade phonics