Are you trying to teach your children/students tricky words? If so, you know you need to think out side the box and use modern stimulating approaches to get your little ones to learn! What do I mean? If you are teaching tricky words (also know as sight words) to English as a second language students, you need to each the pronunciations (these words don’t follow they phonic rules), the spellings and the meanings for each word! At FunLab Workshop, we follow the Jolly Phonics guide to tricky word order but we have integrated an entire series of activities to make sure the kids learn. Here are some tips for teaching Tricky Words! So let’s break down each of the points which they must learn:
- how to pronounce the individual tricky words. Traditional methods have students memorise the pronunciation.
- how to spell the tricky works. Yikes, even this in traditional method requires memorisation.
- the meaning of the tricky words. ONCE AGAIN IN TRADITIONAL METHODS THIS IS MEMORISED!
Unfortunately, the trend here is memorisation. If you have followed the Jolly Phonics method and the FunLab philosophy in general, you know that memorisation is not our usual message. That is why it is so important to try to stimulate your students and use repetition to guarantee that they are learning!
So let’s get started!
TRICKY WORK PRONUNCIATION
If you have the Jolly Phonics flashcards, you will already have tricky word flashcards. At FunLab over the years we have moved away from the traditional flashcard for tricky words and started to use color coded star shaped cards. The color coding is dictated by the Jolly Phonics. What does this mean? The read level tricky words (which allow you to read the Red Level Phonic readers) are on red stars.
The second step is teach the words as if they were a chant. For example, I the he she we me be to do of was. Sing it all the time.
The third step is GAMES! For example, you can place the tricky word stars on the floor and have them jump from one card to another saying the word. Another method is to use roll and read mats. Click on image below to download an example. I made this from an editable mat from TWINKL. You have the kids roll a dice. They must read the tricky word next to the number showing on the dice. If they read it correctly they can color the block red (or which ever level you are working on). If they made a mistake with the pronunciation they have to leave the square blank. Whoever colors all five words in a single row first wins the game!
If you are looking for ready made material for free, make you sure download this pack from TPT which has all sorts of fun games including bingo, memory, go fish and UNO!
TRICKY WORD SPELLING
The method that we use is for learning the spelling is that which is recommended by Jolly Learning. Here is a link for a short video that shows how it is done. You can show the kids the tricky word star and then cover it up. Then ask the students to write down what they remember. Then you show them the star again and see if they spelled it correctly.
We also use the spelling bee format to practice spelling in every lesson. You can divide the class into two teams and call the kids to the board – one from each group. Give the two kids different words and see if they can remember the spelling! The team with the best spelling wins a small prize. We also send the tricky words home to study with Mom and Dad. Getting the parents involved is a fool proof way to improve learning.
TRICKY WORD MEANING
This is the hardest part. I really push the kids to learn the meanings of tricky words as we teach them. This is because these words are high frequency and the kids will find them in all the related readings. If they learn how to read and pronounce a word like “I” but don’t know what it means, it makes it really frustrating for English as a second language children.
After many years of experimenting different techniques and we have adopted a simple method. You tell them the meaning in their native language. I usually never go through Italian but we have found over the years that the short list of tricky words are too abstract to use anything other than translation. Even this can be done in the form of a game. You can say “How do you say io in English????”. The children have to chant back “I!”.
Do you have any tips to teaching tricky words? If so let me know!
Alison
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