Creating Lifelong Learners

The Sight Word Turtles are located here and are available for kindergarten and first grade. They are aligned with the Open Court decodable books.

The Turtles are a way of organizing high frequency words to make them fun for students. For teachers, they can be used to assess student knowledge of sight words. For example, Mario is on Turtle #3, Nancy is on Turtle #4.

Each week, use the weekly homework sheets to assign 4 words for students to learn. Print the corresponding turtle on the back of the homework.

Some teachers have students color in the words once students are able to read them. I did have students color the words when I taught kindergarten and then put these on the wall. In first grade I wouldn’t have students color the turtles because I wanted them to keep practicing previous weeks words even if they had already them correctly. Struggling readers would know a word one week but then forget it the next.

The parent reports are a form letter designed to reduce teacher workload and maximize instructional time. You can assess students right from the form or use the sight word turtles and then circle the words students read quickly and send the form home to parents. Using this regularly holds students and parents accountable to student learning.