Two summers ago, right before Elisabeth and Sam were to start Kindergarten the first time, another mom snuck me a list of 100 Sizzling Sight Words.
“This is the list!” she said, like she had stolen an advance copy of the Bar Exam. “They’ve got to learn this list of words to go on to First Grade.”
At the time, the twins were just four years old. They could spell their own (first) names, but that was it. Reading was not clicking. It wasn’t clicking that great for Catie either, who was in Second Grade, struggling with her own list of sight words.
That summer we never looked at that contraband list my friend gave us. We did do worksheets and school every day, but they were PreK stuff. Matching and counting practice. The idea of reading still sent both kids to tears. They just could not do it. Letters and their sounds did not connect.
Sure enough, the first day of Kindergarten (Part One), the teacher handed out those 100 Sizzling Sight Words and told the kids that if they learned this WHOLE LIST, they got a crown and a visit to Mr. Gerber’s office for a picture and a pick from his treasure chest.
On the second day of school, several kids already had the list down. At pick-up, they were sporting the crowns I knew my kids were months away from winning. Another helpful friend gave me laminated cards she had made by photocopying and cutting up the 100 Sizzling Sight Words.
“So you can study them in the car. Or on trips.”
Kids studied these words in the car and on trips?
Those sight words were kryponite to my kids. Trying to sound out the word eight reduced them to puddles of tears. Second Grader Catie was still struggling to read some of the words on that list. Trying to get my new five-year-olds to read them was guaranteed level-10 frustration for everyone involved.
As the months of Kindergarten wore on, the other kids in the class earned their 100 Sizzling Sight Words crowns. When another of the twins’ friends would prance out the door at the end of the day with a 100 Sizzling Sight Words Crown, Sam and Elisabeth would look at them in wonder. Especially when we found out the teacher had created 200 MORE sight words for those kids who had already mastered the first 100. The Hergenrader kids were now 300 words in the hole. They would never learn that &$%# list.
We did work on the words, and they were getting better at them. But they still read white as where and kind as kids. I was thisclose to hiring one of those Tutor Doctors to drill the kids on sight words. But, honestly, memorization wasn’t their problem. Their brains really just weren’t ready to read. Take this from a former tutor. I put myself through grad school teaching struggling readers sight words.
The twins’ struggles with sight words contributed to our decision for them to repeat Kindergarten. The list was, after all, words they needed to know before First Grade. Six of their classmates, who had mastered the list, would be repeating Kinder. How could we push our sight-word strugglers into First Grade?
The summer before Kindergarten II, we declared war on those 100 Sizzling Sight Words. The tone was now aggressive. Scared my kids would never read, that we just weren’t trying hard enough, I nagged and nagged the twins to study them.
Those sight words became my parenting tooth ache, I loved to prod it when I wanted to feel guilty. Or like a lousy mom. After two years, my kids were the only ones who didn’t know those sight words? Why were we such a lazy, disorganized family?
To match my spastic sight-word focus, the twins would alternatively hate them…or declare “I REALLY KNOW THEM!”
By the first day of Kindergarten Part II, I thought they knew them too. They had different teachers, which gave Sam the edge. His teacher was less of stickler about learning the words. Even with 90% accuracy, she gave him the crown.
Elisabeth’s teacher wanted her to know each sight word in three seconds. By the end of the First Quarter, Elisabeth still hadn’t earned the crown. But, still, we worked on them. It had taken two years, but she really could read the words just about by sight. We were close.
But when she went in to test, her teacher identified four words she still couldn’t get in three seconds. After way more than two years of this list, Elisabeth honestly believed she would never read that list. She wasn’t even discouraged about it, just kind of accepted it, like she would also never have long black hair.
Just like life always happens, the same day she gave up on the list was the day she finally earned the crown. When she walked out of school wearing that crown, I screamed and hugged her so much we caused a scene. The other parents, those whose kids had learned those same sight words two years ago, or the new crop of Kindergarten students who got crowned on the first day of school, probably wondered what the big deal was.
The big deal was she had finally jumped that hurdle that had tripped her for two years. For the early readers, those sizzling sight words had been a blip, a fun challenge. But for our kids, and especially Elisabeth, that list was so much more. Difficulty. Hard work. Disappointment. Real frustration.
And then, genuine success.
The words did turn out to be just a hurdle. Earning that crown boosted her confidence so much, she’s reading like a machine. Book after book. Her self-esteem is soaring. Eight is eight. White is white. Kind is still sometimes kids, but that’s okay.
And the crown? Among her most prized possessions. When she first earned it, she wore it for two days straight. She slept with it on and even wore it to school the next day. Maybe the easy-breezy readers thought this was weird.
Elisabeth didn’t care. For her, that crown represented one of her greatest accomplishments.
Two and a half years in the making.
