Dolch pre-primer sight words

Edward Dolch built his lists in the 1930s from the words that showed up most in children's books of the time. The pre-primer list is the first and shortest, 40 words, and it's the one most kindergarten classrooms start with. Words like a, the, I and is carry the grammar of every sentence a beginner reads, so a student who knows them can read real sentences much sooner.

Here's what the table below shows that a flash card doesn't. Five words (a, one, said, the and two) never fully line up with the spelling patterns. Many others are only early: go, me and we follow the open-syllable pattern, which comes later in the sequence, so a student meets them as heart words first and can decode them later. Big, can, help and red are plain short-vowel words a student can sound out within the first few weeks of phonics.

That changes how you teach them. Sound out the decodable ones. For the rest, point out which part is regular and which part needs to be learned by heart. In said, the s and d do just what you'd expect; only the ai is odd.

1. Teach the decodable words with your phonics lessons, not as flash cards. When big comes up, have the student blend /b/ /i/ /g/.
2. For a heart word, say it, tap one finger per sound, and spell it. Then point to the heart letters: "In said, the ai says /e/. That part we learn by heart."
3. Introduce two or three heart words a week, not ten. Review each one daily in sentences until the student reads it in under a second.
4. Check by reading, not recall: the student reads the sentences below before you show a word on its own.

• Look, I can see a big cat.
• Come and play with me.
• Where is my little blue bag?
• We can jump up and run home.
• Help me find the yellow ball.
• It is not funny, said the man.
• Here is one big flag for you.
• Three cats ran to the wall.
• Make a red and blue ring for me.

Every word comes from the public-domain Dolch lists (Dolch, 1936 and 1948). We do not use the Fry list. Each word was run through our decodability engine, which checks the word's spelling units against a pronouncing dictionary and against the lesson in which each spelling and sound is taught.

"Readable by sound from" is the earliest lesson at which every part of the word has been taught. "Heart word at" is the lesson where the sequence teaches it as a heart word. Irregular letters are the ones whose spelling and sound the sequence never teaches. Contractions and words missing from our lexicon are marked to check by hand.