Sight words how to#

Seuss books as they contain a lot of them! Repeat exposure, pointing a word out, and talking about it provides a much better introduction than simply giving a child a list of terms to learn. Draw a child’s attention to a word by looking for it in children’s books. There are many ways to teach sight words-here are just a few ideas!

He eventually released an additional list of 95 nouns. This means today’s sight words are comprised mostly of service words such as prepositions, adjectives and verbs.

He narrowed the sight words list down to 220, leaving out nouns. In order to create the list, he looked through children's books for the most common words they contained.ĭolch felt that teaching young children to memorize too many words would be counterproductive. Sight words are sometimes referred to as Dolch words after the man who assembled them into several lists many parents and educators teach today.Įdward William Dolch published a list of sight words in 1948 while he was working at the University of Illinois. This is why reading can be quite slow in the beginning, when very few words look familiar to the child.īut after a learner has sounded out a word multiple times, he or she will find it easier to recognize by sight, which is to say he or she will be sight reading. Sounding out words, or decoding, uses up a lot of cognitive energy and attention. In order to read a word, a child must first be able to recognize individual letters and sets of letters and then map the correct sounds onto them. A child who is a strong reader from an early age may find he or she acquires sight words effortlessly through repeat exposure from extensive reading.īut these words may require some extra effort and time for other students to learn, particularly if they are struggling to keep up with peers when it comes to reading.Ĭhildren develop pre-literacy skills, including individual sound, letter and word recognition, through conversations with caregivers and being read to from an early age.

Sight words how to#

Most children are introduced to sight words in first or second grade when they begin learning how to read. More than 75% of the average children's book is made up of sight words. Mastering them frees up attention for processing harder and lower frequency words. That's because they are the most common English words used in writing.

Sometimes you'll find sight words referred to as high-frequency words. They are useful for young children to know, but also a good idea for struggling readers.Įnglish as an additional, second, or foreign language learners, especially those who are just getting started with reading and writing, will also benefit from studying sight words. When a student learns to recognize sight words automatically, it can increase his or her reading fluency and comprehension. This is why they are so important to teach. They're called sight words because if you learn to recognize them by sight, instead of having to sound them out, it makes reading easier. Sight words are the English words you most frequently encounter when reading.