Some examples of sight words that educators teach per grade level are as follows: The Dolch World List is divided into five levels of difficulty: The Dolch Word List contains a series of terms up to the third-grade level, but teachers often use other lists from fourth grade onwards. One of the most common lists of sight words taught in schools is the Dolch Word List, which contains 220 non-nouns and 95 high-frequency nouns. This prevents students from getting confused and discouraged and builds their confidence in their understanding of a text. After familiarizing themselves with these terms, students can recognize at least 50% of the sentence. It becomes easier for students to understand the meaning of a text when they become familiar with sight words, as they can link different sentences together to form a better understanding. This saves time and strengthens understanding of the text. A student can better focus on important words inside a text than spend their time reading and deciphering all the terms. There are many other benefits to sight words than just being able to read them. They are essential for students to master because they can account for up to 75% of printed material. These include terms like "and," "it," and "the," occur so frequently in texts that readers don't have to sound them out and recognize them at sight.īuilding up a base of vocabulary terms helps the students to read faster and be more fluent when reading, as they no longer have to pause and read them. As the name suggests, they are words that a student is expected to know at first sight. Sight words frequently occur in a text and are also referred to as high-frequency words. One thing that students become familiar with is sight words. Sometimes they encounter words that they don’t understand or cannot memorize no matter how many times they try. Also referred to as penmanship, hand writing takes considerable practice to create a unique style that appeals to readers.Īs every student progresses in grade level, they learn new vocabulary terms and how to use them. Although the digital age seems to have made handwriting obsolete, reality is much different. It is estimated that the Fry list is found in roughly ninety percent of what we read and write. The list expanded to one thousand in all. In the 1980s this list got an update by Edward Fry. He encouraged children to focus on these vocabulary terms to become better readers. He created a list of two hundred and twenty words and ninety-five nouns that are of high occurrence. In the 1930s an educator names Edward William Dolch recognized this and realized that there are some words that readers should automatically know. What Are Sight Words and How Do They Help?Īre there some words that you just seem to see more often than not when reading? You bet ya! There are roughly one hundred vocabulary terms that will be present in half of what we read.