Rainbow Write Sight Words
When it comes to differentiation in the classroom the area I struggle with the most is how to differentiate sight words for kindergarten. Students start Kindergarten in different places, including how many sight words they know. I’ve had classes where some students didn’t know any while other students already knew all the sight words that my curriculum teaches in Kindergarten. This is why I made games where my students rainbow write sight words.
During the school year, I slowly start to introduce sight words to my students. I decided to switch my focus from not only being able to read the sight words but also spell sight words and forming the letters correctly (top to bottom).
I knew this was an area that all my students could improve in. My sight word spelling games allowed all my students to practice this skill because even my students that could read all the sight words couldn’t spell all of them correctly. Each student will rainbow write sight words they need to practice reading and writing.
Rainbow Write Sight Words Storage
After testing a student, I used kindergarten sight word games with flashcards. The sight word flashcards were the words the student was working toward that week. My students start with the red flash cards which are the first 10 words they should learn in Kindergarten according to my curriculum. Once they can read and write all 10 sight words, they get the next 10 sight words but this time they are printed on orange paper. This continues until they build the rainbow or once the school year is over. This allows each student to be working on rainbow writing sight words pertained to them.
You can do rainbow writing sight words using a binder ring for each student. Here is one of my students’ sight words rainbow ring, they are on purple level. They are working toward reading and writing 60 sight words.
As the teacher you get to determine how many colors there are and how many words you want the students to learn. If you have students that can go pretty far in the rainbow or are higher achievers you can make different shades of colors (ex. light blue then dark blue). The rainbow writing sight words your students practice is up to you.
I test my students every Friday during my guided reading block. I pull students to read the rainbow sight words to me one on one. Then, during whole group time I test them all together on how to spell them.
Practice Sight Words Worksheets
My favorite practice sight words worksheet game: SMELLY MARKERS!
But seriously that is just one of the many rainbow write sight word games I allow my students to play with during small group time to practice their sight words. I have a cart in my room (click on picture below to view cart in amazon) that holds all of their interactive sight word games I have introduced to them. When we first started I introduced 3 a week to monitor how my students were doing. Throughout the year I build up until all the drawers are filled.
My students love having a choice in what games they get to play. Almost all the games require the students to write the sight words. Some of the sight word board games and sight word memory games are just reading the words.
I love that every student is practicing their own words and having tons of printable sight word games with no-prep activities that are engaging.
Writing Sight Words
Grab the data sheet tracker inside my rainbow write sight word games to keep up with what color each student is on! Also, includes a rainbow for students to color in as they complete levels (goes up to 7 colors).
