The 20 Word Chant for Sight Word Mastery

I've been using the 20 Word Chant to help my kids learn sight words/high frequency words for a long time. The chant follows the pattern of the military cadence "I don't know what I've been told..." If you can't get it in your head, you can hear it here on this video.

This chant can be used with other words as needed.

Here are some of the activities I do with the chart in a small group with students either pointing to words or writing words on white boards:

• Model reading it while pointing to the words.
• Echo read each line.
• Say words for students to identify. (You might want to do this one line at a time in the beginning.)
• Give clues for words the students can find. "I'm thinking of a word that _____." (is the opposite of stop or rhymes with bike etc).
• Read it chorally.
• Use a chart sized paper and give each student a turn to point to the words for the group.

They will memorize it. Once they have it memorized, they can use it as a tool to identify words in their books. When they see a word they know is in the chant, they can read the chant to figure it out. It's similar to the way they can use the ABC chart and song to identify letters.

I also created a question word chant to help with all those tricky "w" words. Both chants are available for free.

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