Sight Words and Dolch Words

High-Frequency Words for Reading Fluency
Sight Words and Dolch Words

 

"Amazing, isn’t it? We have over a half-million words to communicate with, but half of
everything we write and read depends on only 0.02 percent –
— on only those 100 most frequent words." 
                                                               — Frank B. May in
Reading as Communication

What exactly are "sight words?" These are words that good readers may instantly recognize without having to "figure them out." There are two reasons why sight words are an essential component of good reading: First of all, many of these words do not sound like their spellings might suggest, so "sounding them out" would be unproductive. Also, a good reader really can’t afford the time to dwell on too many words, or he may lose the speed and fluency necessary for determining the author’s message.

How should we decide which words to teach as sight words? Studies suggest that the most in our language, known as "high-frequency words" be the best place to start. Believe it or not, the 100 most common words actually make up about 50 percent of the material we read! The 25 most common words make up about -third of our written material (Fry, Kress, and Fountoukidis).

We can enable our students to greatly increase their reading efficiency when we teach them to read half or more of the words they encounter in a quick and automatic manner.

You can probably guess correctly at many of the most common words in our written language, such as: the, a, is, of, to, in, and, I, you, and that. You may also want to refer to lists assembled by Dolch or by Fry, Kress, and Fountoukidis.

"For instructional purposes these are usually referred to as sight words or sight vocabulary because we would like our students to recognize them in less than a second. Why? Because this enhances their chance of getting to the end of a sentence in time to remember how it began."

Frank B. May in Reading as Communication

More Information on High-Frequency Words:
Practice with Abstract Sight Words
More on Practice with Sight Words
Betsy B. Lee on Teaching Dolch Words
Dolch’s List of Basic Sight Words
High-Frequency Words: Classroom Activities

References:
The Reading Teacher’s Book of Lists
Fry, E., Kress, J., and Fountoukidis, D. Paramus, New Jersey: Prentice Hall.

Teach Reading Creatively: Reading and Writing as Communication (7th Edition)
May, Frank B.

High-Frequency Word Books:
High-Frequency Words: Stories and Activities, Level A ~ Evan-Moor Educational Publishers
High-Frequency Words: Stories and Activities, Level B ~ Evan-Moor Educational Publishers
High-Frequency Words: Stories and Activities, Level C ~ Evan-Moor Educational Publishers
High-Frequency Words: Stories and Activities, Level DEvan-Moor Educational Publishers
Word Tracking: High Frequency Words (A Book of Blackline Masters) ~ Betty Lou Kratoville
Increasing Fluency with High Frequency Word Phrases Gr. 2 – Dr. Timothy Rasinski
Words And Rhymes For Kids: A Fun Teaching Tool for High Frequency Words and Word Families – Rita Kaye
4000 Essential Words, Book 1 – Paul Nation
Increasing Fluency with High Frequency Word Phrases Gr. 1 (w/CD) – Edward Fry
Sight Word Readers Parent Pack: Learning the First 50 Sight Words Is a Snap! – Scholastic
100 Write-And-Learn Sight Word Practice Pages – Instructor Books
Sight Word Poetry Pages: 100 Fill-in-the-Blank Practice Pages – Rozanne Williams
25 Read & Write Mini-Books That Teach Word Families – Nancy Sanders