Dolch primer sight words

The primer list is usually taught at the end of kindergarten or the start of first grade. It's longer than the pre-primer list and less about grammar words; it adds colors (black, brown, white), action words (ate, came, ran, ride) and the pronouns he, she, they and our.

A lot of primer words look harder than they are. Black, did, get, must and went are plain closed syllables with a blend or a digraph. A student halfway through a phonics sequence can sound them out, so there's no reason to memorize them as shapes.

The words that need attention are the ones taught as heart words long before their pattern comes up. Was and want use the a that says /o/ after w, which comes late. They uses ey for the long a sound, one of the last vowel teams taught. Once th has been taught, a student only has to hold the ey of they in mind until the lesson that teaches it.

1. Sort the list before you teach it: words the student can already decode, words you will teach as heart words, and words that will be decodable soon if you wait.
2. For they, was and what, show the regular letters first, then the heart letters. Write the word with the heart letters underlined.
3. Practice in phrases: "they ran", "she saw", "what was". Phrases build speed better than single words.
4. Keep reviewing the pre-primer heart words; primer sentences use them constantly.

• She saw a black cat under the tree.
• Please get the white ball, too.
• They ate at home at six.
• Who will ride with us?
• Yes, we went out, but now we must get in.
• What did he say to you?
• That is a pretty brown bag.
• Our new cat was so good.
• There is no fire at our home.

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.