What is the plot of Silly Sally?
Silly Sally finds her way to town “walking backwards, upside down” (Wood, Silly Sally). As she continues on her path, she meets different characters and even finds a new way to reach town by the end of this rhyming story.
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What are sight words?
Sight words are the most common words used in a text, that are normally memorized. I loved the website https://sightwords.com for more resources and information about Dolch and Fry lists. They had free resources and quick activities you can do with your child right away to help children learn these words quickly.
Why use Silly Sally by Audrey Wood to teach Sight Words?
Yellow flowers flood the pages in this happy book. Animals meet, greet, and follow Sally as she walks backward, upside down. She finds a loon singing a tune, a pig dancing a jig, and more adventurous characters along the road (Wood, Silly Sally).
The rhyme and rhythm repeat sight words page after page, making practice for children seamless. I focus on three sights words per read-aloud at first. Now that we have read the book a gazillion times, we pause and point to more and more sight words.
How can I use Silly Sally to teach sight words?
We used colorful pointers to read our big book copy of the book. The kids helped to identify the specific sight words we focus on each time we read.
Wiki sticks are also an excellent resource for making circles around words to focus on while reading. I quickly loop the waxy string around a sight word in the book and instruct kids to find these words as we turn the page. We color coded our materials to identify the three different words. For example, pink for the word went, green for to, and yellow for she.
My favorite way to reflect on sight words while reading the book aloud is to use highlight tape or highlight flags. It keeps kids engaged in reading and multiple practice opportunities to locate chosen sight words as we flip the pages. It also can stay on longer than wiki sticks, that might leave a little residue if I forget and leave it on the page overnight.
Pointers, and wiki sticks are used to point out sight words in the reading of Silly Sally by Audrey Wood.
Follow-up activities that review sight words from the book are a great way to check for comprehension and have fun reflecting on what was just read.
Which sight words can be practiced using the book Silly Sally?
The sight words found in Silly Sally by Audrey Wood include; a, to, no, no, she, how, did, the, who came, they, up, get, went, down, and he.
We started with the Dolch words; she, went, to, first, because these words are used most frequently in the book.
What are other reading skills that can be taught while reading this book?
- Foreshadowing, predicting, inferencing
- Rhyming words
- Sequence of events
- Word Meaning
What activities are best to use to introduce the sight words found in Silly Sally?
Before reading Silly Sally by Audrey Wood, I showed flashcards of sight words found in the book to pre-assess which words to focus on with my preschooler.
Here is a link to my Teacher’s Pay Teacher’s free handout.
Also, before reading the story, we discuss rhyming words and listen for these words as I read.
We also played for a few days with an alphabet sensory activity that used letters to form sight words. I would make a word with the materials and model sounding out the words. Then, we went for a word hunts as part of our bedtime routine using our favorite bedtime books to introduce the idea of identifying these words in various stories we read.
For more information about the Alphabet Sensory Table Activity please click the link.
What are some games to practice the sight words from Silly Sally for preschoolers and kindergartners?
I made two handouts to play games with my children. Both activities start with going to Audrey Wood’s website and printing the coloring pages from her Silly Sally Activities page. Then my kids colored the pictures, and we laminated and cut out the drawings. Finally, I glued them to popsicle sticks to use as pointers, game pieces, and reader’s theatre characters.
I printed a copy of the handout and laminated both pages. Then I cut out each circled sight word on one sheet. The other sheet I kept as is.
A beginner activity is to take three laminated circles and place them on the table. Next, I read each word aloud and pause to spell out the word. Holding a character pointer, I call out a word, and my daughter quickly covers the word I said. We then spell the word again and continue this for more terms.
To play the game, we scattered the circled words around the table. I called out a word for my daughter to find. She would slap down the Silly Sally pointer on the word. We continued this for all the words from the story.
Another matching activity that uses this handout is to find matching words to the ones on the chart. See the below video for an example.
My children picked which character they would like to play with for the game activities, and they would scatter the sight word cards around the carpet. Then, I would call out a word, and they would try and find it and use the Silly Sally character to cover the word quickly as we re-read the book.
What is a tuff tray activity I can use with preschooler and kindergarten students using Silly Sally?
I used two different sensory activities with this book over a week with my kids. It took me minutes to set up and clean up. We also continue to read the book often, so I’m sure I’ll make these bins again.
Here is a link to for this Silly Sally Tuff Tray Activity.
The tuff tray activity includes a mini trail for letters to be contained within and later used to create words from the book. Then yellow rice and chickpeas fill most of the container to cover the sight word cards I made. I included all the terms from the book, but this can easily be multiple copies of the exact three sight words.
* We added more items as we continued to play after a few days. We used rainbow rice and large letters and Pop It silicone mats for added fun forming words.
Silly Sally Sensory Table Sight Word Play Activities
This sensory table activity was a fun play idea that allowed children to build sight words and try and retell the story of Silly Sally.
Here is a link to this Silly Sally Sensory Activity.
Sight Word Writing Activity with Sensory Bin Materials
Clean-up was fast for the Silly Sally tuff tray activity, so I used leftover materials for another activity. Because the items in this tray are all different, I threw everything in a giant spider sifter to remove the letters and chickpeas. Then used a standard colander to separate the rice from the sand.
That remaining sand mix I used for this sight word writing practice.
For writing, we love using paintbrushes, foam brushes, and fingers to write in the sand.
What are other Audrey Wood books that are best for sight word practice?
The below list of books have a great repetition to them to help reinforce the sight words these books contain. But most of Audrey Wood’s books would be great as follow-up read aloud stories.
For more play ideas that can be used after reading Audrey Wood’s stories, please visit my post about Best Activities for Audrey Wood Books.
- In The Deep Blue Sea by Audrey Wood and Bruce Wood (Try Scholastic– not affiliate link)
- Quick as a Cricket by Audrey Wood & Don Wood (Buy)
- The Napping House by Audrey Wood & Don Wood (Buy)
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