In January 2017, a reading interest survey was given to students to gauge their feelings towards reading and sight word instruction. Questions were read aloud to students and they colored in a happy face if they felt positively, a slanted face if they felt neutral, and a sad face if they felt negatively. The results were analyzed and compiled into a spreadsheet for accessibility.

In April 2017, the same survey was given again to each student. The results show a positive increase in student attitudes towards learning new sight words.

Reading Interest Survey

Sight Word Intervention

Each week, my CADRE Associate worked one-on-one with eight students who were having difficulty identifying sight words. During this time, students reviewed sight words using strategies from previous class instruction. Data was tracked each week to determine how students were retaining sight words. This data was kept in a spreadsheet so it could be easily analyzed and so we could compare these students' progress to their peers.

Overall, each of these students showed an improvement of sight word automaticity from February 2017 to March 2017.

Sight Word Automaticity

At the beginning of my study in January 2017, students were individually assessed on their sight word retainment. This information served as baseline data for my research. Students were only assessed on words that were introduced through our district's reading curriculum.

In March 2017, students were individually assessed once again on their sight word retainment. Data was kept and analyzed to determine students' automaticity of sight words.

A final individual assessment was conducted in April 2017 to determine students' retainment of sight words. The data shows that all twenty students in my class increased their sight word retainment from the beginning of my study.

My district's reading curriculum is designed to introduce two to four new sight words every one to two weeks. Numerous sight words were added throughout the duration of my research but not all 47 kindergarten sight words had been formally introduced when my research concluded in April.

While three students had mastered all 47 kindergarten sight words, we were on track to reach our kindergarten goal of having 80% of students know all sight words by the end of the year.

Text Level Assessment

In December 2016, students were individually assessed on their reading fluency and comprehension to determine an appropriate reading level. Students were then arranged into small groups based on their reading levels. In these groups, students read stories containing sight words from our reading curriculum and reinforced reading skills.

The average kindergarten student reads between a level A and a level C.

In April 2017, students were individually assessed once again to determine an appropriate reading level. 19 out of the 20 students in my class showed growth in their reading fluency and comprehension. Therefore, these students increased text levels and improved their sight word automaticity.

12 out of 20 students are reading above grade level.

Text Level Assessment Data