

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. 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).

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 consists of 52 words and includes at, be, but, came, did, do, he, into, no, on, saw, she, was, with and yes. After learning the pre-primer list, children should be taught the primer list.

A, and, for, in, is, it, said, the and to are the building blocks of this list. This list includes the most frequently occurring words in children’s books. Teaching them to read the words simply requires connecting each sight word in the child’s memory to the written version of the word.ĭolch’s pre-primer list of 40 words is recommended for students in grades K and 1. Young children already have these high frequency words in their verbal vocabularies. Sight word mastery is one of the keys to fluent reading. 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. The heaviest emphasis on mastering sight words should come in the primary grades. Kindergarten -1st grade Dolch Sight Word 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.
1ST GRADE DOLCH SIGHT WORDS GREATSCHOOLS FREE
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. While Dolch created specific lists of sight words to learn at each grade level, each Dolch sight 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.
