Glossary · Letters, phonics and word reading
What are Dolch words?
Definition
Dolch words are a list of 220 common service words plus 95 common nouns, compiled by Edward Dolch in the 1930s and 1940s from children's reading books.
Dolch grouped the 220 service words into five levels: pre-primer, primer, first, second and third grade. The list is in the public domain and still appears in many classrooms, often as the sight-word list a school expects students to learn.
The words are common, but the list is old and its levels are a rough guide. Many of the words are fully regular (and, in, it, run), so a student who knows short vowels can read them by sounding out. Only some have truly irregular parts.
A practical way to use it: check which listed words your student can already decode, teach the irregular ones as heart words, and let the rest come with phonics.
In a lesson
Take the pre-primer list and mark each word as decodable now, decodable later, or a heart word. For a student at short vowels, words like run and jump go in the first column right away.
Why does this matter for the record?
If a school sends home a Dolch list, record which words are taught as heart words and which are waiting for a phonics lesson. It avoids drilling words the student will soon decode.
Rate each skill as you teach it
Needs support, Developing, Secure. The rating schedules the review and builds the report.