Thinking Maps and Poetry Instruction and Their Impact on Sight Word Acquisition of Kindergarten Students

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine if the use of Thinking Maps or poetry instruction would have an impact on a young child's sight word acquisition. Both the experimental group and the control group were kindergarten students receiving the same curriculum instruction, with the exception of the experimental group receiving sight word instruction using Thinking Maps during small group instruction, while the comparison group received only poetry and hands-on activities for sight word instruction. The study was conducted over a four-week period and occurred in a co-taught, open space classroom. The results of this study show that there is no significant difference in a child's sight word acquisition based upon the two types of instruction. Students did achieve slightly higher on a posttest, the Dolch Word List, when using poetry and hands-on materials. The results of this study also showed improvement with the experimental group indicating the positive effect of Thinking Maps when segmenting nonsense words, however not when identifying sight words. Further research could be conducted to determine the effects of Thinking Maps and poetry on the fluency rates of primary students.