Welcome!
We are Susan Brillant and Stacey Brown and we teach grade one at Island View School. We both have taught many years at the K-3 level but this is our first year teaching together.
We created this system in the fall after having a discussion about how word work would look in our rooms this year. It was a new grade for Stacey and it had been a few years since Susan had taught grade one. We wanted to have a great system in place, but felt that many of the word work centers out there didn’t work for each child’s ability and even worse, some of them required no thought on the part of the student. For example, we worried students would spend more time thinking about what colour pattern they would make with their letters and not really think about what word they were supposed to be learning. We had both experienced this first hand in our own classrooms and we wanted something better for our students.
Out of that discussion the idea of individualizing each student’s sight word list was born. We realize that individualizing word lists isn’t a new concept, and it was something we had done previously. However, we were looking for a system that would work for younger students, have a better tracking system and more meaningful practice centers. After many discussions and doing some research, we have created an individualized Sight Word Ring program that you set up in the fall and use for the entire year. This program allows you to quickly track students as they work at their own pace through the rings, create accompanying word work centers, and easily track student progress. Our program uses the 103 Miriam Trehearne sight words but you can easily adapt it to your own word list. This system could also be used to teach letters and sounds.
The digital materials found on this website will allow you to create the word rings, create accompanying word work centers, and easily track student progress. The PowerPoint presentation below has additional information.
We hope you find the information useful! Now that we’ve been using the system for almost an entire school year, we couldn’t imagine teaching sight words any other way. If you have any questions please feel free to contact us.
We created this system in the fall after having a discussion about how word work would look in our rooms this year. It was a new grade for Stacey and it had been a few years since Susan had taught grade one. We wanted to have a great system in place, but felt that many of the word work centers out there didn’t work for each child’s ability and even worse, some of them required no thought on the part of the student. For example, we worried students would spend more time thinking about what colour pattern they would make with their letters and not really think about what word they were supposed to be learning. We had both experienced this first hand in our own classrooms and we wanted something better for our students.
Out of that discussion the idea of individualizing each student’s sight word list was born. We realize that individualizing word lists isn’t a new concept, and it was something we had done previously. However, we were looking for a system that would work for younger students, have a better tracking system and more meaningful practice centers. After many discussions and doing some research, we have created an individualized Sight Word Ring program that you set up in the fall and use for the entire year. This program allows you to quickly track students as they work at their own pace through the rings, create accompanying word work centers, and easily track student progress. Our program uses the 103 Miriam Trehearne sight words but you can easily adapt it to your own word list. This system could also be used to teach letters and sounds.
The digital materials found on this website will allow you to create the word rings, create accompanying word work centers, and easily track student progress. The PowerPoint presentation below has additional information.
We hope you find the information useful! Now that we’ve been using the system for almost an entire school year, we couldn’t imagine teaching sight words any other way. If you have any questions please feel free to contact us.
Susan Brillant
[email protected] |