A couple of years ago my school created a kindergarten through four grade benchmarking norms for reading sight words. We have a list of five hundred words that we think that all our students should know by the spring of their four grade year.

What we don't have in writing is what does sight word fluency sound like. In the Wilson Reading System, fluent is a no more than 2 seconds a word with the first thing that comes out of your month counting. So, in talking with my special education team, we decided that if a student could read this list of 500 sight words correctly with the first thing out of their month counting taking no more than 5 seconds a word that we would consider that fluent.

To do this, I created a Google presentation that flashes the word for 5 seconds and then moves no to the next one. I did this 1) so I wouldn't have to time the student and 2) so it could be used with fidelity with the same idea being used with all our identified students or students needing their sight word fluency check. We also created benchmark scores for grades Kindergarten through Fourth grade with recommendations for Fifth and Sixth as to where to take students sight word knowledge. Have a great week!