Signing Sight Words for Success



Posted: Tuesday, March 03, 2009

by Kim Taylor-DiLeva
http://www.kimssigningsolutions.com

When children know sight words, they can read more fluently and better retain what they read. Struggling readers often struggle learning their sight words. You can help your child/student retain more sight words by incorporating sign language signs along with each word.

Jan Hafer and Robert Wilson present a study in their booklet called Signing for Reading Success (p.12) where a 14 week study took place on 10 1 st grade children who were struggling readers. The children were purposefully chosen for this study because of their difficulty in retaining new sight words. During regular instruction, these 10 students averaged sight word retention of 69%. However, when a sign language sign was used in conjunction with the sight word, the students averaged 93% retention.

On page 85 in the book Dancing With Words by Dr. Marilyn Daniels, she shares a story from Dr. Robert Wilson about a boy named Oscar who was in 2 nd grade and because of poor behavior was seated away from the other students. He had no sight word vocabulary. Dr. Wilson started showing Oscar the sign for each sight word in the lesson 10 words each day. After the first lesson with the addition of sign, Oscar remembered ALL TEN. After the second day he remembered 19 of the 20 words, and after the third day Oscar was seated back with the class. He was motivated, excited, and became a teacher for the rest of the class (by teaching them the signs).

Incorporating sign language into your sight word instruction is very easy to do. Just look up the ASL signs for the sight words that you want your students to learn in an American Sign Language Dictionary (you can also use an online dictionary that shows a video of how to do the sign.) Show your students the sight word and the sign. Say it and sign it. Ask the students to look at the word, and say it and sign it with you. Repeat this a few times. Every time you are discussing, practicing, or reading this new sight word, you and your students will sign it when it is read. To make it easier on yourself and your students, you may want to look into purchasing "My 1 st 50 Sight Words in Sign", where frequently used sight words are on a card alongside their sign for easy learning/recalling. You can find them at http://www.kimssigningsolutions.com/productsshop/sightwordcards.html.

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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)
» left by Teresa Ortiz
 3 years 60 days ago.
186 fans.
Hi Kim, Welcome to searchwarp. Thank you for this interesting and important information. What a great way to help young children to incorporate memorization skills into learning to read. Blessings to you, Teresa
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