I feel teaching sight words to students is a very important part of reading. The faster they can read the sight words, the better their fluency is. I found this game through Whole Brain Teaching that I want to incorporate in my class next year. It's called SuperSpeed 100.
Superspeed 100 is a fun game for beginning students from kindergarten through 3rd grade to learn 100 sight words fluently. The more rapidly students can read words, the greater their reading fluency and understanding of stories. This game is not meant to replace the reading system at your school. It is meant to be supplementary with the things you already use when teaching reading. Students who play SuperSpeed 100 do not have to have any letter or sound knowledge. Can you believe that? The game teaches reading by recognizing word shapes.
If you can find a few minutes several times a week to play this game with your class, Mr. Biffle says substantial improvements in reading speed will be shown. He says that gains of 20%-40% within in a month are not uncommon. Who doesn't want that for their class?
The words are arranged in order of frequency. It contains 100 levels. One new word is added in each level and the previously learned words are repeated. At every 10th level, there is a Challenge. The Challenge contains all the words from previous levels. If a student can't read all the Challenge words accurately, they should not advance. The idea is for the students to master the words. Once a student is at level 100 they need to read all the words within 60 seconds to move on to SuperSpeed 1000.
Are you ready to find out how to play?
When playing this great game the first thing you have to do is decide on what word you want your students to begin with. Once you decide, then you can start having your class play this game. Arrange your class in groups of twos. You want to group a stronger student with a weaker student.
When you tell the class to begin one person reads the first word, then the other person on the team reads the next word and so on. If the partner doesn't know a word, help is allowed. Keep taking turns until the teacher says stop after a minute. Then mark the team's record on the page and the give the class another try for a minute. Start over with the first word you read, but whoever started goes second. The goal is to try to beat the previous record.
When the game is replayed, the team starts at the beginning of whatever level they ended in. When players break their own records, they place a checkmark inside their personal record star. Students love recording their personal records.
This game is so great because Mr. Biffle says the students love it. They are not competing against others but with themselves.
I can't wait to try this game with my class this year. I am always looking for fun ways to teach sight words. I know students love racing so I am guessing that this game will be a big hit. On the Whole Brain Teaching website you can find the pages you will need for this game. I hope you try it and let me know what you think. I will be trying it too.
