Here’s How Dolch Sight Words Help Your Child Become A Better Reader

Learning to read is a complex process for adults and children alike. In every language, there are certain words that occur more frequently than the others. Knowing how to recognise these words helps children read better and subsequently become more fluent readers.

Disney.BYJU’S Early Learn app may help your child master some of these frequent words through an interactive video or while playing a learning game on the app. Different quizzes require a child to complete sentences that contain these sight words. Also, value education stories, like the one shared below, makes it easier for the child to associate sounds with the text. 

What Are Sight Words?

A paper published in The TESOL Encyclopedia of English Language Teaching by Rachel Adams Goertel in 2018 says that sight words are words that readers do not have to decode by using letter-sound correspondences, context clues, or spelling patterns. Simply put, these are words that young children can memorise before developing the understanding of phonetics, i.e. sounding words out. 

For example: The house is on a hill. The bold and underlined words in this sentence are sight words. Multiple sight words lists are available today. These lists often consist of words appearing most frequently in children’s spoken vocabulary and written materials. Dolch Sight Words list was coined by Edward Dolch. He was a Professor at the University of Illinois from 1919 to 1940. 

You can download the Dolch Sight Words list here for your reference. Parents can ask children to colour this in their favourite colours and put it up on the wall. Parents can then go through the list with their child every day to help them master the sight words. It will definitely help them in the long run. 

Download the Dolch Sight Words (Pre-K to Grade 3) here.

Why Do Children Need To Learn Sight Words?

There are multiple reasons why children need to learn sight words and why they are a priority while developing early literacy. Other than building the basic vocabulary of the child, they are as follows:

• Recognising sight words instantly helps children become fluent, confident readers as they can read most of the words without external help
• Learning sight words allows children to focus on learning less frequently occurring words such as places and objects with the help of picture cues
• Many sight words have atypical spellings. They cannot be sounded out as they are spelt exactly, and are hard to denote pictorially. For example: said, was, etc. 
• Mastering sight words helps children focus on comprehension due to increased accuracy, speed, and fluency in reading

It is heartwarming to see young children enjoy and learn words so early in their lives. When we make early learning fun, they become better learners for life. 

Download the Disney.BYJU’S Early Learn App

Reference:

Goertel, R.A. (2018). Sight Word Vocabulary. In The TESOL Encyclopedia of English Language Teaching (eds J.I. Liontas, T. International Association and M. DelliCarpini). 

DOI: 10.1002/9781118784235.eelt0830