Tools for Teachers - English Raven's Dolch Sight Word Resources
http://www.englishraven.com
Jason D. Renshaw

THE DOLCH SIGHT WORDS - AN 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 Dolch words are also commonly known as "sight words" because very often they cannot be either depicted 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.

DOLCH SIGHT WORD LISTING

Dolch organized his listing into sections that match grade levels. This represents a sequence, not an order of difficulty, and matches the frequency of words according to grade-level material. Despite this allocation, it is generally recommended that all of the words in all the sections 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. Click on the links below to access these free pages, which will open in a separate browser and can be printed directly from the internet:

PRE-PRIMER WORDS
[Set 1]: http://www.englishraven.com/Dolch_preprimer_list.html

PRIMER WORDS
[Set 2a]: http://www.englishraven.com/Dolch_primerA_list.html
[Set 2b]: http://www.englishraven.com/Dolch_primerB_list.html

1ST GRADE WORDS
[Set 3]: http://www.englishraven.com/Dolch_grade1_list.html

2ND GRADE WORDS
[Set 4a]: http://www.englishraven.com/Dolch_grade2a_list.html
[Set 4b]: http://www.englishraven.com/Dolch_grade2b_list.html

3RD GRADE WORDS
[Set 5]: http://www.englishraven.com/Dolch_grade3_list.html

COMMON NOUNS
[Set 6a]: http://www.englishraven.com/Dolch_nounA_list.html
[Set 6b]: http://www.englishraven.com/Dolch_nounB_list.html
[Set 6c]: http://www.englishraven.com/Dolch_nounC_list.html

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', not 'meaningful words'.

OTHER ONLINE RESOURCES FOR DOLCH WORD PRACTICE AND APPLICATION

The English Raven Members section contains additional resources, including preformatted practice reading cards for implementation at 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. Site members can also access a Dolch Word based Reader for YLs called "Why can't I Fly?" - a simple little story 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 pictures. Suitable for beginner readers aged 6-9. See previews and pictures of these here:
http://www.englishraven.com/ttools_dolch.html

[For additional Tools for Teachers, including Session Planning, (Reflective) Lesson Planning, Syllabus Design, Positive Reinforcement Techniques, Basic Testing Templates, Vocabulary Word-Hoard materials, and Young Learner Writer's Workshop materials, visit www.englishraven.com]