Undeniably the early years of a child’s education are critical to her development as a reader. During preschool and the primary grades she is building the foundations for a lifetime of reading. One of the building blocks of a strong foundation in reading is sight words. The ability to easily identify and understand high frequency words in texts helps the young reader move efficiently and effectively through reading tasks. While it is important for young readers to master the core set of 220 high frequency words by the end of third grade, this does not mean that sight word instruction ends on the last day of the third grade school year. Sight word instruction should be an important part of the fourth grade reading program as well. Fourth grade teachers and parents should focus on three main approaches to sight word instruction: remediation, reinforcement and spelling of the pre-primer through third grade word lists and introducing the current fourth grade sight word lists.

Remediation and Developmental Sight Word Instruction in 4th Grade

As any parent or educator knows, each child develops at his or her own rate. While there are generally accepted benchmarks and milestones that we aim to help our children reach at particular points in their development we know that not all will reach them at the same time. This idea is especially true when applied to literacy development. Though parents and teachers focus reading instruction in grades pre-k through three at least in part on sight word recognition, not all children will integrate all of the words on Dolch’s lists into their reading and writing vocabularies during these years. Therefore, it is important to continue to spend time working with students in the fourth grade on developing recognition of the words on the pre-primer, primer, first, second, third and high frequency nouns lists.

For some students this means offering remediation instruction. These students have been exposed to the words before, but have not fully committed them to their vocabularies. They may need more time practicing identifying the words individually (by reading and writing them in isolation) and in context (by reading and writing them in full texts). Students with processing or learning disabilities often require additional time to learn sight words so remediation is an important part of their literacy instruction.

For other students developmental sight word instruction in the fourth grade is necessary. Some children simply do not learn sight words in the early grades. They may not have had consistent early educational experiences, as is sometimes the case with ESL students who are new to U.S. schools. These students do not need to be re-taught sight words; they are learning them for the first time. Fourth grade teachers and parents should work with these students using the beginning list of sight words (pre-primer) and work their way up to the third grade list of words. They should focus on teaching the children to identify sight words within context and in isolation using the same best practices recommended for the early grades.

Reinforcement and Spelling of Sight Words in the 4th Grade

Because many students come to fourth grade with mastery of most, if not all, of Dolch’s sight words parents and teachers of this group of children can primarily focus their instruction on reinforcing and spelling these 220 words and 95 nouns. Adults should continue to encourage fourth graders to use their knowledge of sight words when reading new texts. During guided reading they should point out and remind students of sight words appearing in texts. Teachers should also continue to make high frequency words a part of their classroom word walls.

In addition, fourth grade sight word instruction should focus on spelling. Once a child is able to identify a word in print, he can move on to making it a part of his own writing. Because these children have already integrated these high frequency words into their reading vocabularies they are ready to make them a part of their writing vocabularies. Spelling word lists in the fourth grade should be comprised primarily of the sight words from the pre-primer to the third grade Dolch lists. Parents and teachers can help students learn to spell these words by teaching them patterns of spelling. Many of the sight words (and English words in general) can be read and spelled using general patterns. When children learn these patterns they are better able to “work out” new words they want to read and write. Just as adults teach children to use phonemic patterns to “tackle” unfamiliar words in texts, they can also teach them to use the same patterns to spell. For example, a young reader is able to discover the word “ran”(primer) in a story when she is taught that it is the word “can” (pre-primer list) with the /k/ sound replaced by the /r/ sound. The same rule can apply to spelling. Similarly, children can learn to read and spell compound words by being taught that they are comprised of two shorter words. The word “myself” (third grade list) is simply “my”(pre-primer list) + “self”. If a child is taught to spell the smaller, high frequency words first he can then easily move into writing compound words.

Fourth Grade Sight Word Lists

Unlike the lists designed for earlier grades, there is no universally accepted list of sight words for the fourth grade. Different sources offer different lists of words deemed to be those appearing with the highest frequency in grade level texts. Parents and teachers should select the fourth grade sight word list that seems to most closely fit the texts they plan to use with their children as the basis for sight word instruction.

Though fourth grade sight word lists differ in content all of their creators seem to have used similar criteria for selecting the words. Most of the words on these lists are polysyllabic and many are compound words comprised of roots that are on the earlier Dolch lists. Most of the fourth grade lists include proper nouns and adjectives related to the United States (American, United States, English) and terms of address for men and women (Mr., Miss, Ms., Mrs.). In addition, the fourth grade lists feature a large number of frequently used contractions including I’m, can’t, and didn’t as well as often confused homonyms such as their, they’re and there.

Parents and teachers working with fourth grade students should use the same best practices suggested for the earlier grades to teach this age group their sight words list. Word walls, flashcards and reading sight words in context continue to be effective instructional strategies at the fourth grade level.

View the full archive of sight words articles.

Successful readers use a number of tools to help them understand texts. One of the most effective and powerful reading tools that parents and teachers can help children develop is sight word recognition. When a child is able to grasp and identify sight words he is well on his way to becoming a thriving reader.

What are Sight Words?

Believe it or not, 50% of all reading texts are made up of the same 100 words! The most frequently used and repeated words in the English language are known as sight words. This list of words includes the, a, is, of, to, in, and, I, you, and that. Think about the number of times that you have seen these words in a piece of reading material. It’s probably too many times to count.

Sight words are critical to reading not only because they are used so frequently, but also because many of them cannot easily be sounded out or illustrated. Imagine what reading would be like if you attempted to sound out walk ever time you encountered it in your reading. Then imagine that you do not know the word the. You cannot use the pictures accompanying a text to help you decipher this word because it cannot be illustrated. Using phonics or picture reading skills for words like these is useless and fruitless for readers, especially those who are in the early stages of developing their decoding skills.

Because they are used so often it is important that readers be able to recognize these words on sight (hence the term “sight words”). When a reader masters sight words she is able to understand at least half of the words in a particular text. By eliminating the need to decode these words, the reader is able to focus on those that are more difficult and less familiar. Beyond this, sight words offer important clues about the meaning of a sentence. For example, when a reader is able to identify and understand the word and in a sentence, he knows that there will be multiple figures, actions or descriptors in the sentence. Similarly, if the reader sees the word into in the sentence, she knows there is movement from one location or idea to another.

The Dolch word list includes the most common 220 words and 95 nouns encountered in children’s books. Dolch words, or sight words, are critical in early reading development because they represent high-frequency words and are difficult to sound out or to illustrate.

The Dolch word list resources below are organized a few different ways: Alphabetically by grade, by frequency by grade, and in some cases by frequency combined. This provides you with several different ways to conduct Dolch word list practice in your classroom or at home.

All Dolch word list activities are free to copy and distribute in your classroom or at home. Have fun!

1. Dolch Word Lists

Dolch Word Lists	Web Page	Printable PDF
Dolch list of 220 words and 95 nouns
Dolch list of 220 words, alphabetically, by grade
Dolch list of 220 words, by frequency, by grade
Dolch list of 220 words, by frequency, combined
Dolch Nouns

2. Dolch word list – word search puzzles

Click on the link below to access twenty free Dolch word list word search puzzles and answer keys. Like all our worksheets, you’re free to print and distribute for home or classroom use.

Twenty Free Word Search Worksheets

3. Dolch word list – flash cards

Each set of flash cards are displayed 8 to a page and ready to print. Just click on the PDF icon to open the file.

Dolch Word List Flash Cards	Printable PDF
Dolch Pre-Primer Flash Cards
Dolch Primer Flash Cards
Dolch First Grade Flash Cards
Dolch Second Grade Flash Cards
Dolch Third Grade Flash Cards
Dolch Noun Flash Cards

4. Dolch word list – cloze passage worksheets

Cloze worksheets below are divided into grade levels with three worksheets per grade plus nouns. Just click on the PDF icon to open the file and print.

Dolch Cloze Passage Worksheet	Printable PDF
Pre-primer - Cloze Activity 1
Pre-primer - Cloze Activity 2
Pre-primer - Cloze Activity 3
Primer - Cloze Activity 1
Primer - Cloze Activity 2
Primer - Cloze Activity 3
First - Cloze Activity 1
First - Cloze Activity 2
First - Cloze Activity 3
Second - Cloze Activity 1
Second - Cloze Activity 2
Second - Cloze Activity 3
Third - Cloze Activity 1
Third - Cloze Activity 2
Third - Cloze Activity 3
Nouns - Cloze Activity 1
Nouns - Cloze Activity 2
Nouns - Cloze Activity 3

5. Dolch word list – word shape worksheets

Dolch Word shape worksheets provide practice in identifying the letters shapes in words. Just click on the PDF icon to open the file and print.

Dolch Word Shape Worksheets	Printable PDF
Dolch pre-primer word shape worksheets (3 worksheets)
Dolch primer word shape worksheets (4 worksheets)
Dolch first word shape worksheets (3 worksheets)
Dolch second word shape worksheets (3 worksheets)
Dolch third word shape worksheets (3 worksheets)
Dolch nouns word shape worksheets (6 worksheets)

Sight word acquisition is an important building block in the construction of a child’s ability to read. Once she is able to read all of the words on Dolch’s lists for example, she has access to up to 75% of what is printed in almost any piece of children’s literature. How exactly do teachers and parents help children develop their stores of sight words?There are several proven techniques that any adult can use to teach sight words. Whichever strategies are employed, the best success is seen when one adult with a small number of children at a time. The more one-on-one time a child has learning and practicing sight words with an adult, the greater his chances to integrating them into his long-term memory.

Teaching Sight Words With Pictures

Many learners think in pictures. Whether we realize it or not, we often visualize what we are attempting to learn to help solidify the information in our memories. Think about the last time you needed to get somewhere you hadn’t been before. Even if you used written directions instead of a pictorial map, you probably had a number of visual markers such as unusual sights or signs to help you learn how to get there. Presenting children with illustrations of sight words along with their print versions helps them make important connections between the object and the word. Flashcards or posters with a colorful picture and the word written under it are excellent sight word teaching tools. In addition, teachers or parents can have children draw their own pictures of each word on the same page to help them link the print with the visual.

Listening to and Saying Sight Words

Sight words are not only frequently used in writing, they are also essential to conversational English. Because most of Dolch’s sight words are already in children’s verbal vocabularies , learning to read them is simply a matter of connecting the print word to the oral version in their prior knowledge banks. Parents and teachers should make explicit connections between the print version of a word and its sound. Pointing to a word while repeating it is one way to do this. Also, adults should have children say the sight words to help them become actively involved in their learning. This can be as simple as asking them to repeat a sight word while writing it or as involved as having the child search through a pile of sight words written on index cards or sentence strips to find a word that best completes a sentence you have written.

Teaching Sight Words Through Repetition

Children do not learn new words by being exposed to them only once. Repetition is key to sight word acquisition. Young readers should be given opportunities to read and write a new sight word multiple times. Repetitive reading of texts featuring certain sight words is one strategy for helping children commit these words to memory. Also, to practice spelling sight words, parents and teachers can have children write and say aloud words several times. When a child writes and says the word at least five times in a row, she is more likely to commit it to memory. To subtly help children mentally repeat sight words, parents or teachers can create Dolch word walls. As a new sight word is learned it is written in large print on a sentence strip or piece of paper and hung up on the wall in a location where the child is likely to see it often. Not only will repetitive glancing at the word reinforce it in the child’s memory, it is also easily accessible for the parent or teacher to refer to when talking with the child about it.

Sight Words in Context

When children see words used in natural ways rather than in isolation they are more likely to remember them because they develop an understanding of the word’s significance and meaning. Literature based instruction is an extremely effective method for helping children learn sight words. There are many leveled texts that are designed to highlight certain age-appropriate sight words. Beyond this parents and teachers can present sight words in short sentences or help them write their own sentences incorporating sight words.

Teaching Sight Words Through Music

Music is a wonderful medium for presenting and reinforcing information especially for young children. Think of how much easier it is to remember the lyrics to a song you haven’t heard for years than to remember what you had for dinner last night. Creating songs that incorporate sight words and practicing them frequently with children gives them the opportunity to use multiple modalities to learn the new words. A teacher has created a series of “replacement lyrics” for common songs including “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”and “Old McDonald Had a Farm”that feature a number of sight words. Fortunately for us, she has posted her creations on the Internet

Teaching Sight Words With Games

Once children have had the opportunity to study new sight words, games are a fun, hands on way to help strengthen their retention. These games are easy to create at home or at school and can be modified based on the particular sight words a child is learning at the time.

• Wordo—Played just like the game Bingo, but this version uses sight words instead of numbers on a grid card.
• Concentration—Sight word concentration cards can easily be made using index cards. Simply write each word on two cards, shuffle and lay face down to play.
• Word Searches—Create word searches featuring sight words or use one of the many available on the Internet.
• Go Fish—Go fish cards can easily be made using index cards. Simply write each word on two cards, shuffle and deal to play.
• Letter Magnet Spelling—To reinforce sight word spelling, provide the child with a set of letter magnets and a metal surface. Call out sight words and ask the child to use the magnets to spell the word.

Have fun teaching sight words! Be sure to visit our worksheets page for lots of free, printable Dolch sight words activities.

There are many excellent resources on the Internet for helping children learn to read. Among these are a number of high quality sites devoted to interactive sight word practice and instruction. While many offer parents and teachers downloadable materials to print and use with their children, there are also a number of outstanding interactive tools for aiding young people’s sight word development. These websites are superb tools for reinforcing the skills being developed through sight word instruction.

Here’s an overview of the types of interactive sight word websites available as well as recommendations for high quality online learning tools to use with your children:

Print Recognition

One of the keys to helping children learn Dolch’s sight words is repeated exposure to the words in their print forms. While printed flashcards are the most frequently used tool for instructing children in new sight words, the Internet offers some interactive activities to help boost their recognition of sight words in print.

• http://www.msrossbec.com/sightwords.shtml: This website has interactive lists of Dolch’s sight words organized by grade level. As each word appears on the screen, adults and children can practice saying the word together. The lists can be repeated as many times as needed to help children make the connection between the print and spoken word.
• http://www.quia.com/cc/91216.html: This site offers a fun , interactive game of concentration using Dolch’s first grade list of sight words.

Auditory Resources

Because most of Dolch’s sight words are already in children’s verbal vocabularies , learning to read them is simply a matter of connecting the print word to the oral version in their prior knowledge banks. To help with this there are a number of excellent interactive sight word learning websites with audio components. These sites give the user the option of hearing a word read aloud through the click of the mouse. Some even include fun age-appropriate games to reinforce the connection between auditory and print words.

• http://www.quiz-tree.com/Sight-Words_main.html#intro: This site is an excellent learning tool for children who just beginning of the process of learning sight words. Organized by grade level, each Dolch list on this site allows the user to hear the word read aloud by clicking on it.
• http://www.netrover.com/~crose/dolch/dolch.htm. This page has two great games to reinforce sight word recognition. The first game, “Listen Match” allows children to hear each sight word read aloud and then connect it to its corresponding print word. The second ,“Jigsaw”, gives children the chance to solve a jigsaw puzzle by clicking and dragging each print word piece to its partner auditory version.
• http://www.sightwordswithsamson.com/sw/sight_words.asp: Another kid-friendly intera ctive site is “Sight Words with Samson”. An animated dog takes children through a series of activities aimed at helping them learn sight words. Each is full of great visual and auditory support for learning.

All parents and teachers want their children to be good readers. With so many different approaches to reading instruction choosing strategies and activities to help them develop into strong, confident readers is difficult. To compound the situation today’s kids, parents and teachers are all busy! As adults we are constantly faced with deciding what activities are the best use of our time with our kids. Sight word instruction is one of the best uses of the time you spend helping your children learn to read. Here are some of the many wonderful benefits of teaching sight words to your children:

1. Sight words are confidence builders. The power of self-efficacy (a person’s belief in his ability to accomplish a task) in learning situations cannot be underestimated. When children believe they can learn something new they are much more likely to actually acquire new knowledge. Children are smart though! They don’t always believe they can complete a task just because we tell them they can. They need evidence that they have what it takes to achieve. Sight words can provide this proof for a developing reader. Because Dolch’s sight words make up 50 to 75% of the words in any children’s text knowing these lists of high frequency words gives young readers a huge advantage when attempting to read new stories. When a child sees that she recognizes more than half of the words on the page, she has the confidence to attempt to read it.

2. Sight words free up a child’s energy to tackle more challenging words. Reading is tough work! As fluent readers we often underestimate the amount of focus and energy reading takes when you don’t know most of the words on the page before you. When children have to decode each word that they encounter in a sentence, they not only become frustrated they begin to lose the meaning of the text. They become so focused on “sounding out” the words that they are not able to think about what the words are actually saying. Once children know Dolch’s sight words, they only need to slow down their reading to focus on decoding new, challenging words.

3. Sight words provide clues to the meaning of a sentence. Even though many of the Dolch sight words contain fewer than five letters, they are critical to a text’s meaning. While many pieces of children’s literature use illustrations as a companion to words, ultimately we want our young readers to be able to decipher the meaning of a text primarily by reading and understanding the words. Sight words help children make sense of what they are reading by providing clues to the overall meaning of a sentence. Take for example a few of the verbs from Dolch’s pre-primer list: jump, play, see. The sentence “I jump in the pool” takes on a whole new meaning when one of the other two verbs are substituted. Similarly, understanding the meaning of pronouns such as I, you, she and he (all sight words on the pre-primer and primer lists) is essential to comprehending the sentences they are used in.

4. Sight words sometimes defy decoding strategies. While phonics instruction is vital in helping children learn to read, its strategies, especially teaching children to sound out unfamiliar words are not always useful. The English language has many words that cannot be “discovered” by a young reader using phonics. A good number of these words are used frequently in texts. For example, four, blue, please and said are among the most commonly used words in children’s stories. It is fruitless for a child to spend time attempting to sound out these words because they do not follow standard phonetic rules. These and many other sight words need to be taught to children so that they can instantly recognize and understand the words when they come across them in texts.

5. Sight word instruction builds a foundation for reading new, more complex words. The benefits of sight word instruction extend far beyond their immediate use in helping young people learn to read. Not only do these words continue to appear in more advanced texts, the process of learning sight words builds important learning behaviors that the reader will forever use to learn new vocabulary. When children learn a sight word they are making a connection between their prior knowledge of the word (its pronunciation and meaning) and its spelling. The process of merging the two is mediated by their knowledge of the alphabet. The letters and their corresponding sounds create a mnemonic that helps the child remember the word. Researchers say once a child has repeatedly practiced this skill for learning vocabulary by moving through the lists of sight words, the process becomes ingrained in her repertoire of reading skills. She will then instinctively begin using this method for integrating new, more complex sight words into her knowledge base.

6. Sight words enhance ESL instruction. With the increasing number of ESL students joining today’s communities and classrooms, it is incumbent upon teachers to find ways to reach this unique group of students. One of the main goals of ESL instruction is to teach children functional English language skills. Teaching sight words to ESL learners gives them tremendous advantages. Because many of the sight words on Dolch’s lists not only occur frequently in children’s stories, but also daily conversations, it is extremely beneficial to focus ESL instruction on sight word learning. Beyond this, some of the verbs that form the foundation of the lists (and of English language texts) take on irregular forms. Consider the changes that the common verbs go, be and do go through when applied to different singular and plural nouns. Because they do not follow standard rules, the only way to learn these conjugations is through memorization.

View the full archive of sight words articles.

While Dolch created specific lists of sight words to learn at each grade level, each Dolch word list is only meant to provide parents and teachers with a road map and sequence for helping children acquire the words that they will encounter most frequently in their reading. Each list is merely a recommendation. If a child masters all of the words on the grade level list before the end of the school year, parents and teachers should feel free to move on to the next list. Similarly, if a child does not commit all of the words on a list to memory by the end of the recommended school year, adults working with the child should continue to help him or her learn all sight words on the previous year’s list before moving on to the next grade level’s list.

Kindergarten -1st grade

The heaviest emphasis on mastering sight words should come in the primary grades. Because a few words are used so often in English language texts, providing children with access to them gives them tremendous advantages as developing readers. Sight word mastery is one of the keys to fluent reading. Young children already have these high frequency words in their verbal vocabularies. Teaching them to read the words simply requires connecting each sight word in the child’s memory to the written version of the word.

Dolch’s pre-primer list of 40 words is recommended for students in grades K and 1. This list includes the most frequently occurring words in children’s books. A, and, for, in, is, it, said, the and to are the building blocks of this list. After learning the pre-primer list, children should be taught the primer list. This list consists of 52 words and includes at, be, but, came, did, do, he, into, no, on, saw, she, was, with and yes. Concurrent with learning the pre-primer and primer lists, children are also encouraged to commit Dolch’s list of 95 high frequency nouns to memory. This list includes nouns often used in children’s daily lives such as brother, sister, ball and goodbye as well as those used for special occasions that are particularly important to many youngsters (birthday, party, cake, Christmas, Santa Clause).

While Dolch recommended that children learn all of the words on the pre-primer list by the end of first grade, other sources suggest that children learn all 220 of the “service words” as well as the 95 frequently used nouns by the end of the first grade. Parents and teachers should set goals for their children’s sight word learning based on their individual needs, interests and abilities.

Grades 2-3

At grades 2 and 3, parents and teachers should continue to reinforce and teach any sight words from earlier lists that their children have not already acquired while at the same time moving on to Dolch’s second and third grade lists. The words placed on these two lists are not seen as often in children’s texts as those on the previous lists, but are still essential to reading grade level literature. Dolch’s second grade list contains more complex words such as always, before, which, would and your. The third grade list features many high frequency words that cannot be easily decoded by the reader and therefore must be memorized. This list includes about, clean, laugh, myself and together. Since Dolch created his lists in 1936, there are a two words on these lists that are rarely used in modern children’s texts: upon(2nd grade list) and shall (3rd grade list). Many educators have removed these words from the lists of sight words because they are used so infrequently.

Grades 4-12

Because most students will have learned to read Dolch’s sight words by the fourth grade (read about 4th grade sight word strategies), teachers in the upper grades primarily focus on ensuring that students can spell these words in their writing. While many children may learn to read sight words quite quickly, they often have difficulty spelling them correctly in their own writing. This is especially true for homonyms such as their, they’re and there. Children need additional reinforcement to correctly use sight words when creating their own written pieces.

Sight words are also essential to the instruction of English Language Learners (ELLs, also known as ESL students) at the upper grades. Sight words are not only critical for learning to read the English language, they are also the building blocks of conversation. Focusing instruction in the ESL classroom on sight words benefits ELLs in the same ways that elementary level instruction does. It provides these students access to at least half of the words they will read allowing them to concentrate on decoding and learning more complex English vocabulary.

View the full archive of sight words articles.