Sight Words
Sight words are a huge piece to our students foundational reading skills. I have seen first hand how a students reading can progress when you give them a few minutes a day to practice their sight words. But what sight words do you use? First, I would definitely check with the primary teachers you work with. Most have a list that they go off of for the year. If this doesn’t work though, there is always Dolch.
I decided to do some digging on Dolch to see why everyone always seems to be using his list of sight words. Edward William Dulch was a professor at the University of Illinois who published a book (found it on Amazon) in 1948. The book was a list of words that children could not sound out, instead they had to know them from sight. These 220 words were common and needed in order to create fluency in reading. His research and lists are still used today. (Found information from A Well Spring of Worksheets)
People have been using his list ever since and have even created some really fun resources like these:
As you can see when you google dolce sight words, there are quite a few possibilities and resources out there. This list is great for a starting off point when you have no idea where to go with sight words.
Next year I will be printing out a K-3 list for each of my students and testing them once a month on the words to show their growth. We will work on the words daily as a class in a fun game format and I will watch how much their pre reading skills grow. You can easily do this in any primary classroom in a format that works for you and your students to track growth of their sight words.
Happy Teaching :)