Do this even for words that are not spelled using common letter–sound correspondences. When working with a full alphabetic reader, teach that in the word and, the a says /ă/, the n says /n/, and the d says /d/. For example, when working with an emergent reader who is solidifying consonant sounds, focus them on the /t/ in to. But be sure that instruction intersects with children’s developmental stage (e.g., Bear, Invernizzi, Templeton, & Johnston, 2012). Principle Two: Ask students to use graphophonemic analysis to read high-frequency words (Ehri, 2005). High-frequency word instruction should occur on basically the same pace as instruction in word decoding in general. Without a concept of word or alphabetic insight, children will have the mistaken impression that words are unsystematic, and learning will be inefficient in any case. For example, some children do not even have a concept of word or understanding of the word boundaries in print and how these map to letters, and yet they are memorizing letter sequences in “sight words.” Similarly, before they even understand the alphabetic principle they are chanting words. In our observation, a great deal of high-frequency word instruction occurs too early-before children have these important pieces in place. Principle One: Teach high-frequency words along with phonemic awareness, individual letter–sound relationships, and a concept of word (e.g., Flanagan, 2007). Here are five principles to keep in mind when teaching high-frequency words: The most powerful mechanism for eventually accessing words by sight is use of the graphophonemic structure, a process that amalgamates the word’s units into memory (Ehri, 1978). Memorizing high-frequency words holistically is not the answer. In the remainder of this post, we explain that this is not the case, and we use the term high-frequency words, meaning words that are very common in English, whether regularly or irregularly spelled. They think that these high-frequency words must be learned by sight, without graphophonemic analysis, because of their irregularities. In contrast, often people use the term sight words to mean high-frequency words, many of which do not follow typical English letter–sound relationships (e.g., said, some). At this point, readers no longer need to engage in decoding (e.g., /c/-/a/-/t/ = /cat/) using an analogy (e.g., cat: like bat with a c) or using sentence context to figure out the words (Ehri, 2005)-they can now read them automatically, without conscious attention. For skilled readers, virtually all words have already become sight words. Ultimately, any word can and should be a sight word, not just words from the Dolch or Fry lists, for example. In this post, we explain why sight words should be taught much as you would teach any other words.įirst, a note about terminology: The term sight word means any word that can be read automatically (Ehri, 2005). If they do not have one readily available, consider using the lists below to assist your child in obtaining a sight word vocabulary.In many classrooms we visit, “sight words” receive a very different kind of instruction than other words, taught primarily as an exercise in visual memorization. SightĪnother option is to contact your school to obtain a sight word list. This information was provided above in separate PDF files. The table below contains both Dolch and Fry’s sight word lists. His list contains 1,000 words, the table above includes the first 225. The first 100 words make up over 50% of all written material. Dolch intentionally excluded nouns from this list.įry created a list containing the most common words in English. He categorized these words into the following five groups: pre-primer, primer, first, second and third. The most prominent lists were published separately by two PhD’s, Dolch and Fry.ĭolch’s sight word list contains 220 service words. There are many sight word lists circulating today. Sight words are common words that are found in everyday print they make up over 50% of all written material.
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