The children also took a copy home to give to their parents so they could review with their child. The point was that they were going to keep track of the words they learned by checking them off their sheet. So I made a check-off sheet so the children could each have a copy of the stuff they had to learn for the year. The requirement for the whole year was 100 words. That particular assessment took exactly five seconds. That is all! One child, Lewis, only knew the word “I”. I sat down with child after child with my long list of words they hopefully learned in kindergarten and found to my chagrin that many of the children knew 1-5 words. In fact, this was the quickest part of the whole year. My first task when I began this process was to do an assessment of each child to find out where exactly they were in learning sight words. All of this petrified me, but I had to start somewhere. Here is what I learned from that first year. The required list of first grade sight words was prominent in the stack, along with instructions regarding the order in which to teach the words, and how and when to display them on the word wall. So, there I sat in my office, shuffling miserably through the stacks of paperwork that detailed the knowledge the district expected me to instill in my children. (In short, you can teach to the child so much easier when you have a handful versus a room full!) Add to this the fact that many of the students were not receiving the proper support at home, which goes a long way in the learning process.

You can read them more easily, see immediately where each one is at the time they shut down. Obviously, it is easy to gauge where each child is in the learning process when you have 6-7 children at your kidney table.

And this was not some cookie cutter, suburban private school. My background had been Title 1, and I was spoiled from being able to teach small groups of children. The first year I was thrown into a regular first grade classroom I felt as though I’d been flung into the lion's den.

Testing 1st grade sight word knowlege