• Core Activities
• Educator-Contributed Activities
• About the Activities
• Teaching Tips
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In Word Recognition activities, students take a regular word, such as sat, and say the word. At first, they may sound out the word to themselves; later, they recognize the word without sounding it out. Being able to recognize words without sounding out each letter will help a student read connected text with greater fluency, a critical goal in early reading.

The objective of the Word Recognition sequence of activities is to teach students to recognize and decode common words on sight.

You can start Word Recognition activities for a specific CVC pattern as soon as students have mastered sounding out words of that pattern. They should be able to sound out a set of four words without error.

Note that we don't include word-form recognition of irregular words in this strand, since that is taught in the Irregular Word Activities sequence.

Note: Some educators use the term sight word to refer to any word (regular or irregular) that a student can identify immediately, without sounding it out; but others use sight word to mean irregular words (words that can only be read on sight, not sounded out). To avoid confusion, we don't use the term sight word here.