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Dolch Sight-Word Resources for Reading
Dolch Word-based Reader for YLs: Why Can't I Fly? (Starring Little Yellow Chicken)
Overview
The famous Dolch Sight Word lists are named after E.W. Dolch, who surveyed a great quantity of children's books to compile a list of the most commonly occuring words in young children's readers. He came up with a list of 220 "service words" (primarily pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions and verbs) and 95 common nouns. It is estimated that the combined listings account for common words that occur in 50-75% of children's books.
The Practice Reading cards can be used in a variety of ways.
As a building process, each card can be copied and given to each student in the class. Following the teacher's lead, each student points to each word in turn and repeats after the teacher as he/she pronounces each one.
Once the students have gained some confidence with this chorally, distribute different cards to different students or different groups/pairs. Individually or in groups/pairs, students attempt to read all the words from the card row by row. They earn points for each word they accurately read aloud. Pair work can be particularly effective here, as the various pairings can first be given some time to hypothesize and discuss what they think each word sounds like. After each round, the cards can be circulated around the class so that each student/pair gets to try out a greater range of words.
At a slightly higher and/or more competitive level, students can be encouraged to increase fluency through a timed activity. Each student attempts to read the words from the card as quickly and as clearly as possible. The teacher times them and lets out an error sound if a word is read aloud incorrectly, in which case the student has to return to the first row of words and start again. Obviously, the student who can get through all the words the fastest and with the least amount of errors is the winner, but it might be more constructive to have each student compete against themselves. That is, they are timed for their first attempt and then given two or three opportunities to try again and improve on their own time. Letting students take the cards home to practice will be particularly effective in this case.
Dolch Word based Reader for YLs: Why can't I Fly?
This simple little story is about Little Yellow Chicken, who is not at all happy about the fact that she can't fly... She sets out to explore the farm and ask the other animals if they can explain why she is a bird, yet can't fly. She doesn't like most of the answers she gets, but along the way learns the value of appreciating the things that she can do!
The story is heavily laden with many of the basic Dolch words, and features colorful illustrations. Suitable for beginner readers aged 6-9.
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Dolch Sight Word Listing
Dolch organized his listing into categories that match grade levels. This represents a sequence rather than an order of difficulty, and matches the frequency of words according to grade-level material. Despite this categorization, it is generally recommended that all of the words in all the categories be learned during the first grade. The listing is as follows:
Pre-primer
a, and, away, big, blue, can, come, down, find, for, funny, go, help, here, I, in, is, it, jump, little, look, make, me, my, not, one, play, red, run, said, see, the, three, to, two, up, we, where, yellow, you
Primer
all, am, are, at, ate, be, black, brown, but, came, did, do, eat, four, get, good, have, he, into, like, must, new, no, now, on, our, out, please, pretty, ran, ride, saw, say, she, so, soon, that, there, they, this, too, under, want, was, well, went, what, white, who, will, with, yes
1st Grade
after, again, an, any, as, ask, by, could, every, fly, from, give, giving, had, has, her, him, his, how, just, know, let, live, may, of, old, once, open, over, put, round, some, stop, take, thank, them, then, think, walk, were, when
2nd Grade
always, around, because, been, before, best, both, buy, call, cold, does, don't, fast, first, five, found, gave, goes, green, its, made, many, off, or, pull, read, right, sing, sit, sleep, tell, their, these, those, upon, us, use, very, wash, which, why, wish, work, would, write, your
3rd Grade
about, better, bring, carry, clean, cut, done, draw, drink, eight, fall, far, full, got, grow, hold, hot, hurt, if, keep, kind, laugh, light, long, much, myself, never, only, own, pick, seven, shall, show, six, small, start, ten, today, together, try, warm
Nouns
apple, baby, back, ball, bear, bed, bell, bird, birthday, boat, box, boy, bread, brother, cake, car, cat, chair, chicken, children, Christmas, coat, corn, cow, day, dog, doll, door, duck, egg, eye, farm, farmer, father, feet, fire, fish, floor, flower, game, garden, girl, good-bye, grass, ground, hand, head, hill, home, horse, house, kitty, leg, letter, man, men, milk, money, morning, mother, name, nest, night, paper, party, picture, pig, rabbit, rain, ring, robin, Santa Claus, school, seed, sheep, shoe, sister, snow, song, squirrel, stick, street, sun, table, thing, time, top, toy, tree, watch, water, way, wind, window, wood
Online Word Card Sets
All of the Dolch words listed above can be downloaded and printed directly from the English Raven site. These have been formatted as neat cards with a color-coded backing indicating grade level.
- Pre-primer Words [Set 1]
- 1st Grade Words [Set 3]
- 3rd Grade Words [Set 5]
Reading Practice Cards
These are special materials available only to English Raven site visitors and are designed to help students practice sight word recognition and differentiate between words through the implementation of three basic levels (A, B and C). For each level there are 10 cards each containing 32 words (8 rows by four words) taken from the Dolch listings, and a combined teacher's guide card for each level allows the teacher to refer to the contents of all 10 cards at once from a single sheet of paper. An example of such cards follows, along with some suggestions on how to apply the cards in class.
Level A
For the basic level, there are four words in each row, of which three are identical and one is slightly different. The different word is highlighted in blue to draw the student's attention to it, for example [on | on | an | on].
Level B
The words on these cards are identical to the words featured in Level A, except in this case the different words are not highlighted. This draws nearer to the actual process of differentiating between words as part of the normal reading process.
Level C
At this level, all four words in each row are different in more or less obvious ways. Rather than following a pattern and concentrating on finding the 'one that is different', by this stage the student is considering each word as an independent unit with its own unique look, sound and/or meaning.
The 10 cards for each level, along with teacher's guides and blank templates for teachers to make their own cards, can be downloaded from the Tools for Teachers sections of the Download Resources Page.
Example Reading Practice Cards:
The Dolch words are also commonly known as "sight words" because very often they cannot be either illustrated via simple pictures or sounded out according to regular phonetic decoding rules. They need to be learned and recognized 'on sight'. Given the frequency of the Dolch words in children's literature, they are deemed crucial for beginner readers, and most experts advocate the these words be learned by native English speakers prior to finishing the first grade in school.
The importance of learning Dolch words for beginner EFL/ESL students has also been pointed out, but it is important to note that whereas native speakers are learning written forms of words that have already become cemented in their oral/aural vocabulary, this may not necessarily be the case for learners of English as a second language. For these students, learning Dolch words really needs to go hand in hand with a rich array of comprehensible language input in both spoken and written form.
There are a few ways these card sets can be utilized to make initial sight word learning effective. The lists can be posted on the classroom wall and referred to as part of activities or self-study. The individual cards can be cut out and laminated, which can make for some fun flip-and-name or draw-and-name activities. All or selected portions of the cards can be spread out on a table and students can compete to find the words they hear the teacher saying. The cards can also be used in a more
creative fashion, with students taking turns trying to slot them together to make simple meaningful sentences (such as "you can jump", "the man is big", or "these children are small", etc). If the students are encouraged to draw simple pictures of the contexts they create with such sentences, the role of the more "meaning-redundant" words (such as "the" or "an") is seen as a sentence building tool for 'meaningful sentences' rather than 'meaningful words'.
