Our 5 year old received a gift of a game that helps learning sight words.
Our (the parent's) first language is not English, and I have never heard this term before.
Wikipedia states that:
Sight words, often also called high frequency sight words, are commonly used words that young children are encouraged to memorize as a whole by sight, so that they can automatically recognize these words in print without having to use any strategies to decode.
The Wikipedia article lists a couple of reasons to teach children sight words, but it doesn't say if there is any differing opinions, other methods of beginning reading, or any drawbacks.
Are there any drawbacks? Is this the de-facto way of teaching reading?
As additional information, we live in the US, and he is attending a Montessori pre-school/elementary and we plan to have him move to public school after kindergarten (he is kindergarten age for next school year).
I am actually not sure if ournative language is taught like that or not, but I had never heard a special term for those words before.