Rock N Learn Sight Words Level 1 DVD Review

As a mom to a four year old girl and as a teacher, I’m passionate about giving my daughter the best educational opportunities. In the past, I reviewed a few DVDs by Rock N Learn, including Letter Sounds, Writing Strategies, and Color, Shapes and Counting. Now, I needed a DVD that would fit with Common Core standards for preschoolers to help my daughter learn her sight words. Watching my daughter in the past couple months, I realized how she had mastered the letter sounds and I knew that she was ready to start memorizing words that you can’t sound out phonetically (sight words). I received the Rock N Learn Sight Words Level 1 DVD to review.

Rock N Learn Sight Words Level 1 DVD

Review of the Rock N Learn Sight Words DVD

While I had been trying multiple strategies at home to teach my daughter sight words, such as worksheets, choral reading and buddy reading, she wasn’t getting a lot of the harder sight words. As a teacher, I felt that helping my daughter to memorize sight words would help her to read with improved fluency and automaticity. Watching the DVD, my daughter was ecstatic to see her friends from the Letter Sounds DVD again. Cartoon characters, including a boy, a robot, and animals, helped engage my daughter with music to make memorization fun. Music worked as an excellent teaching strategy because my daughter enjoyed singing and dancing to the songs.

Even though my daughter already knew a few sight words, such as the words “is,” “it,” “you,” and “the,” the material went at a reasonable pace to help her review what she knew and build on those skills to memorize more sight words. Now, because I teach 5th grade language arts, I realize how review is important to student learning. Children need constant review to master skills. When I was watching the movie, I examined how the songs reviewed the same words several times before going on to new words. Building skills with repetition and music, the DVD was very effective in helping my daughter learn as evidenced by her new ability to pick out her new sight words in books after watching the DVD.

Another successful feature of the DVD was that I could break up the parts into different learning segments to focus on at different times. Because my younger daughter, who is only 1 year old, has been learning to say the word “up,” both of my kids really enjoyed focusing on the “up” and “down” segment of the video. To review the word “the,” I put on the bonus section. As a teacher, I strongly recommend focusing on literacy skills with this product before kids get to kindergarten. Memorizing sight words will give my daughter the advantage of having some rote knowledge before learning the more advanced skills she will need in a year when she starts kindergarten.

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