Contact
678.653.4811
SightWords.com
1718 Peachtree Street NW
Suite 1080
Atlanta, Georgia 30309
United States
About Us
The SightWords.com Team
The SightWords.com team is dedicated to developing child literacy curricula that are research-based and classroom-proven, with clear and simple instructions and accompanied by attractive and easy-to-use materials.
Our team is comprised of professionals with a broad range of educational experience and training, including:
- 10 advanced degrees and certifications
- 74 years working with children
- 40 years teaching reading to both advanced and struggling young students
- 27 years teaching in the classroom
- 57 years training teachers
- 72 years working with parents of young children
- 2 parents of young children
- 33 years in educational administration
- 9 years teaching at the college level
Leave a Reply
65 Responses to “Contact”
Kelli Munsell
Hello,
At what age do you start teaching children sight words?
Thank you!
Kelli 🙂
ADMIN – Hi Kelli,
It depends when the individual child is ready. The need to have developed both the attention span and cognitive capacity to understand Sight Words. 4 – 5 years old is typical. You could try earlier, I wouldn’t wait much later for a developmentally typical child.
Anna@The Measured Mom
Hello! Your website is amazing, and I recommended it to my readers in my newsletter. I just printed some Bingo games to use with my preschooler, but I noticed that it repeated a lot of words. I’m pretty sure I included enough words that this wasn’t necessary. Have you noticed this?
ADMIN – Hi Anna,
Thanks for the feedback. The games are all designed so that they will use up all available words before repeating. For the Sight Words Bingo game, if you select more than the minimum 25 words, then there should be no repeats on any bingo card. If you are getting repeats, please email us attaching a PDF of the defective cards and the list of the words and word-lists you were attempting to use. This will help us diagnose the issue and get it fixed!
Andrea
This is a great resource, but I have a question. You mention “the latest literacy research” and I was hoping to know more about that. Do you have links somewhere that I missed, or some info you can share on sight words and literacy? Thanks!
ADMIN – Hi Andrea,
We are going to put together a more comprehensive research document. But briefly, we used method that draw from the work of Barbara Wilson (Wilson Reading); Samuel Orton, MD; Anna Gillingham (Orton-Gillingham); Grace Fernald; Beth Slingerland (multi-sensory approach); C. Wilson Anderson (International Dyslexia Association); and Siegfried Engelmann (Direct Instruction.
Betsy Primm
Andrea,
Sally Shaywitz, MD has commented a good deal about sight words that are linchpins to fluent literacy for children. Her book is Overcoming Dyslexia. She and her neurologist husband, Bennett Shaywitz, are at Yale and are internationally known for their research on reading.
Leslie
Wow! I don’t know how long you’ve been up and running, but this web site is amazing. I wish I’d had it when I was teaching K! Now I’m using it to print out things for my daughter. (Much, much easier than creating all this in Excel!)
Only suggestion I have so far is that it would be nice to have a less ink-intensive Bingo card option. These are beautiful and would be great if I were going to keep them for a class and re-use, but for just a couple uses with my daughter, I may decide to do some in Excel still…
Anthony (Tony) Eller
I didn’t find out until later in life I was dyslexic, but when I finally realized the reasons why. A whole new world opened up to me. I created a website to help others find their “Gift” that I have found.
http://MyToolBoxToSuccess.com I with the help of a former school teacher and Dr. Bob Berk that started a charter school http://cypressacademy.org in New Orleans that has dedicated 20% of enrollment to dyslexia (problem based learning) are now working on a nonprofit called Billy’s Quest from a song I wrote about being dyslexic called “Billy.” The mission is to bring Awareness and changing the perception of dyslexia. But the #1 Priority to offer free or inexpensive tools to help train teachers or teacher’s aides. I was disheartened yesterday after a meeting where I was told training packets for teachers could run $500 and to have a trainer come in to train could cost $3000! Can we work together to set up a training program and the training packets that the teachers/teachers aids would need.
ADMIN – Hi Tony,
We are always happy to discuss partnership opportunities with schools, teachers, and parents. Just go to our Contact page to call or email us, and let’s talk!
Diane
Thank you so much for this much needed resource. Appreciate being able to find such a neatly organized list, easy on the eyes. Thank you!!
Pam Weldon
Love your incredible website! Can you recommend apps or special software that will allow me to print large batches of flash cards (25-50 cards per set)?
Thank-you Ever So Much!
ADMIN – Hi Pam,
Our flash cards come in the form of PDF files that you can print directly to your printer at home or the office. But if you want to print larger quantities than your home printer can handle, you can download and save the PDF files, and then have them printed out at someplace like FedEx Office.
Anni Frøstrup
Hi, what an easy way to create a game. I´m a Danish speech-language-therapist and I love that I can customize it for speech games. But I can´t use 3 of our letters because it is English. What can I do about that?
ADMIN – Hi Anni,
Thanks for the feedback! We will look into finding a font that accommodates foreign letters and diacritical marks. In the short term, I would suggest simply typing in the closest English letters (or a black space) and writing in the appropriate marks. We are so thrilled to see our materials being used internationally!
Patricia Arroyo
Hi, my name is Patricia. I love your page and strategies to help the students grow in learning. I am an English teacher from Colombia, here it is quite difficult to teach English, our level is very low. In public institutions (where I work) English is not seen as an important subject, just another one in the curriculum, the classes are in Spanish, I would like to receive support of suggestions of how to have my students interested in different bilingual activities, sometimes my ideas ran out, plus I would like to practice my English. thanks
ADMIN – Hi Patricia,
Thanks so much for visiting SightWords.com! Our current resources are aimed at native English speakers, but we have been pleasantly surprised by how many bilingual teachers are using our materials. We do not have anything tailored specifically to native Spanish speakers or bilingual students, but we thank you very much for your feedback and suggestions!
angela
why not provide “facebook” let me “like”this website…i wanna to bookmark it, but i cannot bookmark it in this PC..please improve the website
Kiana
I love this site. I am a teacher and have a predetermined list of sight words from my school. I wonder if it would be possible to upload or save a list of sight words so that I can just select it instead of retyping for each activity.
ADMIN – Hi Kiana,
We do not yet have the upload function you referred to, but we are always taking suggestions for what we should add to our site next. Thanks for your feedback!
Karen
I love your free activities and teaching videos. They are practical and helpful, and in keeping with best practices! Keep this site going! Thanks! Karen
Zarina
I have seen a lot of websites and this one is so amazing and the best. Our country Fiji has a lot of geographical barriers and everyone can not access this website. As a teacher, they must have these resources! Do you have the videos etc that can be recorded for about 700+ schools? Also if someone wanted to print valid materials for schools, at a reasonable cost, because of accessibility, will you allow this, or are they copyrighted?
ADMIN – Hi Zarina,
I have great news for you: everything on our website is completely free! You are welcome to download and print any of our materials. You may even download the files and have them professionally printed in Fiji! All we ask is that you not remove our SightWords.com logo from the materials.
You may also download any of our how-to videos, which are located on our SightWords.com YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgLnxGv7QVPOyMP1TAnzZaQ.
Manjari
I stumbled upon this website trying to frantically figure out how to help my kindergarten daughter to read. I feel like she is so behind and I want to give her extra help at home…but didn’t EVEN know where to begin. This website is so amazing and it really has everything that I need to provide her a solid foundation to reading. I had a solid foundation of phonics and reading, and because of it, I don’t have a problem reading or spelling out any word. I wanted to provide that solid foundation for my daughter also. However, I couldn’t for the life of me remember how I was taught. I don’t know how to thank you guys for providing something like this to parents. This is heaven sent. Thank you, thank you.
Manjari
Okay…so this may be a stupid question, but I wanted to print the sight words on cardstock paper for durability. I have yellow paper at home….is it better to print the words on plain white paper or is colored paper okay. I just don’t know if the color distracts the kids from actually seeing the word and comprehending the information. Thoughts?
ADMIN – Hi Manjari,
Colored paper is actually great for helping children focus their attention on the printed words! White paper is what most people have at home, and that’s fine. But yellow paper works very well as a background for our sight words flash cards.
Debra Schulman
Hi,
I became aware of the importance of phonological awareness when I used to own and operate a Huntington Learning Center. I am now retired and am concerned that my 4 1/2 year old grand daughter is exhibiting some dyslexic tendencies. Your step by step program seems a wonderful resource. What are the fees?
Sincerely,
Debra Schulman
ADMIN – Hi Debra,
Epic that you are working with your granddaughter. There is no fee to use the materials. It is our gift to people like you that want to help their students and/or children.
sherre
Hi, I am working with a 2nd grade students that has difficulty decoding words. He just guesses. He is a terrible speller even though he tries to get his thoughts on paper. Should I take him through this program from the beginning? What would you suggest? He studies pictures to figure out what is happening. He rushes. I think he might be embarrassed by his struggles. He is an excellent athlete – which comes easily.
Thanks so much
Sherre
ADMIN – Hi Sherre,
I would go back as far as you need to, to help him get his foundation right. Even if it seems remedial, it will pay off. He is lucky to have you.
Laurie
Hello, I was introduced to your website last year through my preschool. We have purchased your material, but I am looking for something in particular in which I cannot find in print, nor on the website again. I am looking for the alphabet. I came across it, a month ago,and have not been able to find it since then. Please direct me as to where the alphabet cards are located. Thank you very much!
ADMIN – Hi Laurie,
Perhaps what you are after is the sound pronunciation guide? It is available in Phonemic Awareness –> Sound Pronunciation.
Lindsay
Hello! I have found your sight word instructional procedures very helpful, especially the notes about how to most effectively correct incorrect responses. I am wondering how you manage this correction procedure when you have more than one pair of students playing a game at a time. For example, I work with up to 6 students at once and I’ve been wondering how to effectively monitor responses when I have 3 different sets of students playing games. Sometimes students effectively correct each other, but sometimes they “correct” another student with an incorrect word! Thanks for any advice you can provide and for the excellent site.
ADMIN – Hi Lindsay,
Great question.
I try and get small groups of say 4 students and have them play one of the bigger games together – than way I can keep track of all of them at the same time. I have my assistant take the other children, or I have them do some station work that doesn’t require as much supervision.
I am also not having the children play games with words that are new for them, the games are more to reinforce words that they have already learned – particularly when the game is only minimally supervised.
I may also pair a stronger child with a weaker child so they have someone reliable to help them.
Shandre
Hi my twins are 6 year old. They are in preschool Grade R(term we use in South Africa) but I would like to start teaching them how to read myself as they are very eager to start reading. I’m not 100% sure what it is they can and can’t do yet but I’ve only seen comments about ages between 3 – 5 years on your website. Does that mean my boys are too old for the work covered or can I just do everything with them starting from the beginning? It wont hurt to start at the beginning would it? Do you suggest I skip a few lessons if I see they can do it? Thank you
ADMIN – Hi Shandre,
Start with the phonemic awareness, but at that age, if they are getting it – you can take the accelerated curriculum. Then graduate to sight words and phonics.
Sarah
I am so glad I stumbled across your website (through a google search for a dolch sight words list). I’m so impressed by your content and by how user-friendly the site is!
I do have a question though: I’ve just begun looking over your curriculum, and it appears that your phonological awareness activities teach a lot of the same skills that many phonics programs teach. Where should one transition from here (especially in a homeschool situation)? Do you have any recommendations for phonics programs to use as a follow up (in conjunction with your sight words activities)? I’d like to find something that meshes well with the methodologies used in your program. Thank you!
ADMIN – Hi Sarah,
We use Distar now called Reading Mastery (Engelmann – Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons). It is great, particularly for homeschoolers and reasonably priced. I have heard good things about Zoo Phonics and Hooked on Phonics.
vasumathi
Thank you so much, for preparing sight words content that is so useful for my students and easy to learn and enjoy.
Fiona
To The Brilliant Brains That Created ” Sightwords”.
This is by far the best site for teaching, helping and having lots of fun learning with kids.
Alanna
Hi! I love this site!
I have would love to use your ‘Memory’ game as an activity in my lesson plan for my assessment. I attend the University of Newcastle in Australia. I was wondering if I could have some more information about the developers of the website so that i may accurately reference your work 🙂 What are the names of the authors and co-authors? (Initials will do! if you don’t want to put your full names.)
ADMIN – Hi Alanna,
It was all done by our team, so apportioning individuals is difficult. But a couple of the leaders were Betsy Primm, Donna House, Margo Edwards, and Gajan Retnasaba.
Diego
I agree with you. It would be wonderful to have at least a citation and reference form at the end of each article or info. So people can reference your work properly.
Sally
What a wonderful website! Thank you for providing strategies, video clips, and printable materials. Every activity I have used has been so helpful while tutoring and working with home school students. Not only do I use the materials during instruction, I also send the activities for homework.
Your hard work and dedication is appreciated!
Kalpana
Hello, thanks and kudos to your team for this excellent site. Its fun and full of knowledge. I love words, speak English fluently, though my mastery over the language is average but I learn constantly through crosswords, watching Wheel Of Fortune and Spelling Bee videos. Currently I am a Tax Manager with 14 years experience but not keen on pursuing this further. I love kids and enjoyed a short stint at teaching middle & high school students for about 1.5 years some 10 years back. Please advise what courses should I pursue to be able to do what you guys are doing so I can have fun while working. Regards, Kalpana
ADMIN – Hi Kalpana,
I would talk to administrators in the districts where you are interesting in working. Find out what they value and start building some relationships there. What your local system values should guide your training.
Sophia Han
Really amazing website! I’ve written an online article to recommend this website and got more than 300 views and 30 likes within 4 hours. Good to learn here and teach my own preschool child. Thank you for all the great job!
Monica Figueroa
I was just wondering if do you have any of this material in Spanish for the bilingual classrooms.
Thank you
ADMIN – Hi Monica,
All the games allow you to put in custom words. So just select the “custom” option and type in your Spanish word list.
Tre
Hi! I am a former high school Math and Science teacher. I now have a son who just turned two on Thanksgiving.
At 1.5 yrs old, he knew all his uppercase letters. He just kept asking, “Wuz that?” We had to encourage him to use his vocabulary more. I did not want to push him. We play silly find-the-letter games. He likes Super Y and Leapfrog. I helped him learn lowercase and uppercase. Made a “play” sheet binder for him with Velcro.
He now knows all the letter sounds…some words by sight….numbers 1-20 and a few others…colors…shapes….
We have him at nursery school, 2 hours, 2 days a week. We are a big book, music, and math house. Where do I go from here? I’m playing a lot of games and trying to keep it fun with letters and sounds. He is barely 2, so he can’t write any letter except O. I try to make the letters and words a background focus as we do things but I realized he was trying to decide words as I was texting my sister and he saw my phone.
I don’t want to push but do I start going through phonics and phonics awareness or sight words or both….whatever is natural. I don’t want him to miss opportunities but when your 18 month old is calling out the letters and sounds on a PBS show his older cousin is watching, you know you have to keep that mind busy.
Thank you!
(Also a “Where to begin” page would be great right on or linked to the home screen. Maybe a visual or chart of how the language learning process goes. I speak several languages but I’m like, “Phonics???” It’s been forever. Lol”)
Jane
I love your website! Can you please make your templates support Chinese characters? I can use these to teach Chinese sight words to my students. Thanks.
ADMIN – Hi Jane,
Glad to hear that you are having fun with the materials. Unfortunately, the templates don’t support Chinese characters and we don’t have the resources or expertise to make that happen. Consider printing them out blank and adding the Chinese words (either by handwriting them in, printing them and pasting them in, or some editing software like Adobe PDF or photoshop)
Missy Kelley
Hi, I just found your website and love it! My husband and I are both elementary teachers and have a teaching website. We’d love to include a link to your website on our site, everything on it is free. I’m in the process of making more early childhood resources for teachers and parents.
Missy (theteachersguide.com)
Andy
I’ve just visited your website and I love it…Thank you
joyce
I choose the items and create the memory cards, but I find nothing. So I was wondering where to check for the memory cards after creating them?
Brianne
Thank you for providing such a wonderful resource for parents! In our district, we are required to use “research based” interventions. Do your lessons meet this criteria and would they be appropriate for interventions for struggling students?
ADMIN – Hi Brianne,
The curriculum is research based, aligning with the work of Marilyn Adams’ curriculum, Phonemic Awareness for Young Children as well as the work of the Florida Center for Reading Research. It has been classroom tested for two years. Of course, each district has its own criteria for approving curricula. The sightwords curriculum is a supplementary part of early literacy instruction. I hope that helps.
Kat Ros
Hi, I did comment elsewhere already.
Same thing: can you please set default as lower case? Right now, each cell has upper case and I need to press ‘Shift’ on my phone every time I type a word. Thanks! Your site and tools are amazing!!!
Kristy
I am teaching primer level sight words for my edTPA. What do you consider mastery before you leave a word and move on to introducing a new one? I am having a hard time finding research on this.
Carmen Brown
Hi, I am a 2nd grade teacher in Oklahoma. We teach the Fry words but I have several different resources and some of the words are different. I was trying to get the most up to date list but am having trouble. Can you help me with this?
Thank You
Carmee
Andy
I love this site…Thank you very much
Crystal Doucette
I notice in the videos that some of the cards have a design on the back, for example, Go Fish cards have a blue fish on them. Might I be able to get the design to put on the Go Fish cards I have printed? Thank you for providing this wonderful site. I am excited to share some of these games with the Kindergarten class! – CLDoucette
Tonyia
So grateful for this web sight . I have created many sight word flash cards and used many sight word games.
Thank you soo much
Ryan Ford
Hello —
I just left a voicemail. I have a few questions re proper recording techniques for sight words. I also was wondering if you have any literature that may be helpful. When I perused your website, I saw this on your Q&A page – Q: What does it mean to “master” a sight word? A: A child should recognize the presented target word three times in a row for three days in a row. The child should be able to identify and say the word quickly, showing that they know the word by sight and do not have to sound it out letter-by-letter. I suppose that my primary question is, what does “quickly” mean? A different source references that a student should be able to recognize each word in 3 seconds or less. I would like to know if there is a standard/industry standard or if “quickly” is left to the discretion of the evaluator.
Sincerely,
Ryan
Sight Words Admin
Thanks for stopping by, Ryan. In brief, “quickly” is based on the evaluator’s discretion. It may not be useful for us to be exacting about a student being able to recognize each word in 3 seconds or less. It may be more beneficial to note all audio-visual cues as well as the regularity of the child’s general ease of recognition and repetition of the words that they sight-read.
PAUL
A great video resource for sounding out the letter sounds of the Alphabet.
Lori Prentice
Hi there,
Your website is a wealth of knowledge. I teach mainly upper elementary school students. I’m wondering if you have specific suggestions for this age group and their struggles with not just reading but spelling sight words?
Thank you,
Lori Prentice
Sight Words Admin
Hi Lori, We appreciate your stopping by. I’ve not heard of upper elementary students having trouble spelling sight words specifically before. Are you handling 4th to 6th graders? In those levels, we hear of high-frequency words being misspelled. Here are a few resources online which can hopefully point you in the right direction: https://www.readnaturally.com/research/5-components-of-reading/spelling https://www.understood.org/en/learning-thinking-differences/child-learning-disabilities/writing-issues/learning-and-thinking-differences-that-cause-trouble-with-spelling https://educationandbehavior.com/how-to-help-a-child-learn-to-spell/ https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/51140937.pdf
Dyanne M Thayer
How much does this cost for classroom use?
Sight Words Admin
Hi, Dyanne. This is free to use. We would appreciate your referencing us when you print out the games and other materials. Thanks for stopping by!
Charles
Thank you so much for this amazing resource! What a wonderful thing you’ve done for educators all over the world.
God bless you guys. Thank you!!!
harvey
Thanks a million for providing such an amazing website! This is of so much use for me!
Recently, I have been using the customize feature to type in some some English words that I came across. Besides, I want to type in alphabet symbols as well as sight words. But when I click on create pdf button, the content displays with error codes. That is to say, I could only type in English words using the customize function. Is there a solution for typing in alphabet symbols?
Thanks.
Sight Words Admin
Hello, Harvey. Thank you for your comment and support. We are glad this site is useful for you! For the moment, our text-to-pdf conversion only supports the English alphabet, so we regret that there is no way around this. May we suggest that you use plain alphabet characters and just add the special alphabet symbols onto them (i.e., assuming you are pertaining to the special characters from the “romance languages”: Spanish, Italian, or French)? Otherwise, the simplest workaround would be to print-to-cut the cards themselves, but write on the cards the words that need special characters. Best of luck in your endeavor! If we find a better solution, we’ll update this space as well.
Edmar
Hi. I am glad I have found this site. I am currently doing a research on how to help my students improve their spelling skills. Part of this research is the phonology. I would like to ask your permission to allow me to use your video lessons in my research. Do you have an email where I can send my letter of request?
Your approval can greatly help me and my students.
Thank you very much.
Sight Words Admin
Hi Edmar, You are most welcome to use our video lessons for your research. We just ask you to kindly reference our resources therein. Best of luck.
Edmar
Hi. Thank God I found your site. I am currently doing a research about spelling. I know that your video lessons about phonics could be a great help for me. I would like to ask if I could use your video lessons for my research? Rest assured that your videos will solely be used for my research. I hope you allow me. Thank you so much.
Sight Words Admin
Hi Edmar, You are most welcome to use our video lessons for your research. We just ask you to kindly reference our resources therein. Best of luck.
Sri Gangadharan
I would like to enroll the course for my daughter
Sight Words Admin
Hello! We are not offering a sight words course here. However, our resources are all free for you to use with your children or students. Thanks for stopping by!
Paul
Hi, My name is Paul Mackie and I am a retired Early Childhood Educator; I am currently developing a reading course for Preschool Teachers.
I was wondering if I could use your youtube videos on the pronunciation of the Alphabet Consonant and Vowel sounds in my course?
The videos would not be edited or changed in any way.
I do have a bit of an accent, so the fact that your videos are excellent, with a great explanation and how to pronounce the Alphabet letter sounds would give the teachers of preschool children an excellent foundation in how to sound out the Alphabet consonant letter sounds.
Thanks for your consideration; and an excellent learning to read resource.
Have a great day.
Paul Mackie
Sight Words Admin
Absolutely, Paul. You may want to go to our website, Developing Sound Sense, and use the videos on sound pronunciations that are there.
Jess
Is there a way to make the boxes accept bigger words for the bingo card generator? I teach older students and have words like misunderstanding, subsconscious etc.
Thank you
Sight Words Admin
Hi, Jess. Unfortunately, no. I would draw a Bingo grid on my chalkboard or smartboard, number the words, and randomly put a Bingo number on each student card. Keep track of the words you have used while playing the game, so they don’t go back.
Nancy W
Hello! I just wanted to say that your site is amazing and I love the resources here. Many thanks for putting together a comprehensive & easy to navigate site! I was creating a lot of this on my own and it took hours of research and execution and you’ve just saved me so much time out of my day. You all are AWESOME!
Sue Langley
What is the cost for this program? I have twin 6 year old boys who will be in the first grade.
I have a grandson who is 12 and will be a seventh grader. He entered the hospital on February 12, 2024, and he was very ill. He was in the hospital for over a month, and then was in rehab for several weeks. He did not return to school, but because he had been a good student he was not retained.
I am looking for an excellent program for these children. I do not live near them so that I could work with them daily this summer. Their parents work long hours.
I must know what the cost is before I spend time going through your program.
Sight Words Admin
Hi Sue, There is no cost to using our materials. Feel free to download or print them, as you see fit. Thank you for stopping by!