Leadbelly Blues Festival

The Dolch Sight Word List is a list of 220 common English words that was originally prepared by Edward William Dolch, PhD for his in 1948 book, “Problems in Reading”. In order to achieve fluency in English reading, it is necessary for a child to be able to recognize each of these words, especially since none of these words can be sounded out phonetically.

The Dolch Sight Word List is divided into five levels:

- Pre-Primer: a, and, away, big, blue, can, come, down, find, for, funny, go, help, here, I, in, is, it, jump, little, look, make, me, my, not, one, play, red, run, said, see, the, three, to, two, up, we, where, yellow, you

- Primer: all, am, are, at, ate, be, black, brown, but, came, did, do, eat, four, get, good, have, he, into, like, must, new, no, now, on, our, out, please, pretty, ran, ride, saw, say, she, so, soon, that, there, they, this, too, under, want, was, well, went, what, white, who, will, with, yes

- First Grade: after,again,an,any,as, ask, ,by, could, every, fly, from, give, giving, had, has, her, him, his, how, just, know, let, live, may, of, old, once, open, over, put, round, some, stop, take, thank, them, then, think, walk, were, when

- Second Grade: always, around, because, been, before, best, both, buy, call, cold, does, don’t, fast, first, five, found, gave, goes, green, its, made, many, off, or, pull, read, right, sing, sit, sleep, tell, their, these, those, upon, us, use, very, wash, which, why, wish, work, would, write, your

- Third Grade: about, better, bring, carry, clean, cut, done, draw, drink, eight, fall, far, full, got, grow, hold, hot, hurt, if, keep, kind, laugh, light, long, much, myself, never, only, own, pick, seven, shall, show, six, small, start, ten, today, together, try, warm

Whether in K-12 education, home-schooling or ESL (English as a Second Language), it is essential that students become not only familiar with all these words, but are able to immediately recognize them. Teachers and educators therefore should try to devise activities around these words, and encouraging their learning and recognition.

One common activity is to make use of flash cards in class. Another one, which is great fun for students, but also very helpful in encouraging learning of these words, is to play Dolch Sight Word Bingo. You can use preprinted bingo cards (although these can be expensive), or create bingo cards by hand (which is cheap but time consuming), or use a special computer program such as Bingo Card Printer to produce the cards.

In which business do you pay less for getting more? If you think about it, there aren’t many deals you can get offering that. Flyer printing is an affordable mode of advertising that costs less for printing more flyers. It is easy to get your message across to the public using flyer printing and gives you and your business the exposure it needs. It is important to plan out and design a flyer carefully so that people will read it and will make an impact on your business. The idea is to make a flyer to increase your sales, make people want to visit your store or try out your product.

The first thing you must decide when flyer printing is the theme of the flyer and the headline. The headline depends on up to 80% of the success rate of your flyer. Carefully chosen words related to your business should be used to appeal to consumers. You should be able to read the headline from a distance so that any passer by doesn’t have to stop to comprehend the message of your flyer. You can experiment with different layouts to see which flyer will be the most attractive to your target audience. To figure that out, you need to find out who you want to get the message across to. If middle aged or older people are your target audience you would think about using fewer colours with sober designs and fonts. If children and teenagers are your target audience then lots of colours, exciting fonts and designs should be incorporated into your flyer. Provide reasons and create a desire for them to buy your product or service within your flyer.

In order to reel in someone reading your flyer it is necessary to include selective offers, discounts and other incentives to create an advantage over your competitors. The images you also choose should be coordinating with the idea of your flyer and business. The words and imagery should not be conflicting but blend in together to enhance the theme or idea of the flyer. One large picture bringing out the theme of the flyer is better than many small images. However, if you need to put a couple of images in your flyer, make sure they are of the same relative size and grouped together. There should be equal white space as there is filled space to create a balanced flyer for printing. White space draws your eye to the information. If there is a lack of white space it is like trying to focus on a sea of words which becomes confusing to understand your flyer. Bullets, blocks and borders should be adapted into your flyer to create an orderly identifiable design.

It is essential to calculate how much revenue has increased with the flyer distribution. In order to determine the effects of your flyer printing, a unique phone number for enquiry should be listed on the flyer so you can gage the response from the number of calls made. Even if you provide an exclusive coupon on each flyer, the number of people who come to your store with that coupon can be counted to see how many people were impacted by your flyer. Flyer printing is easy and economical for any business looking to make an impact on the public with their product or service. Do the research on flyer printing and create a flyer with the perfect message you want to give consumers.

Phonics is a very popular method of teaching children to read and write. It is based on the idea that particular letters or groups of letters can be associated with a particular sound. Teachers use a variety of teaching techniques, and classroom activities to teach children these phonics rules – typical classroom activities include flash cards, reading and writing games, and group activities. One particular classroom activity that is especially suitable for teaching phonics is phonics bingo.

All versions of phonics bingo are based on the same general principle: Each child is given a bingo card or worksheet, the teacher or parent reads out words or clues as bingo calls, and the children mark off squares from their cards which correspond to the bingo calls. The winner is the first child to achieve a winning pattern (for example, a straight line of five marked off squares) on their bingo card and call out “bingo!”.

The most basic phonics bingo game is “phonemic awareness bingo”. In this case, the children’s bingo cards are printed with a random selection letters. The teacher calls out words, and children must try to identify the beginning sound of the letter, and find the matching square on their card. For example, if the teacher called out “apple”, the children would look for a bingo square containing the letter “a”.

As students progress, more advanced versions of phonics bingo can be introduced. In these, children have to recognize a word called out by the teacher on their card. Generally you might start with “CVC words” (words consisting of consonant, short vowel, then another consonant), and then gradually progress through more advanced phonics concepts, such as consonant and vowel digraphs, r-controlled vowel words, bossy E words, etc.

One additional variation that can be a lot of fun, and again is good practise for students learning to recognize word sounds, is rhyming bingo. In this version, the teacher calls out a word, and students look for rhymes on their bingo cards. For example, if the teacher called out “bat”, students could match a square which contain “cat”, “hat” or “mat”.