8/14/2019 Dolch (High Frequency) Word Lists & Overview

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The Dolch Words are the 220 most frequentlyfound words in books that children read.Children who learn these words develop a firmbase for beginning reading. May of these wordshould be learnt as sight words.

Units and activities of various descriptions willbe constantly updated to develop the repetition

necessary to familiarise themselves with thewords.

TEACHING NOTES & OVERVIEW

I extend grateful thanks to my sources(credit below) for providing this briefoverview, and when I have combined it with the actual words lists and phrase list,gives an indication of the INTERNATIONAL accepted norms and standards. Notehowever that some work units will have some of the words in various of the othergroups.

I have my own personal method of teaching these to my own children with the aidsof many and various organisations and methods. The end requirement or result is

the same and successful. We must also bear in mind that in South Africa many ofour spellings are different to the spelling in the United States therefore we haveto adapt our teaching plans accordingly.

I have compiled flash cards, work units and sight word lists for each of the fiveDolch Groups, Nouns and the Phrases. The delay in uploading is due to the presentconversion into Afrikaans and Zulu as well, where appropriate.

Overview Teaching Notes

The famous Dolch Sight Word lists are named after E.W. Dolch, who surveyed a greatquantity of children's books to compile a list of the most commonly occurring

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 forcommon words that occur in 50-75% of children's books.

The Dolch words are also commonly known as "sight words" because very often theycannot be either illustrated via simple pictures or sounded out according toregular phonetic decoding rules. They need to be learned and recognized 'onsight'. Given the frequency of the Dolch words in children's literature, they aredeemed crucial for beginner readers, and most experts advocate the these words belearned 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 learningwritten forms of words that have already become cemented in their oral/auralvocabulary, this may not necessarily be the case for learners of English as asecond language. For these students, learning Dolch words really needs to go handin hand with a rich array of comprehensible language input in both spoken andwritten form.

Dolch Sight Word Listing

Dolch organized his listing into categories that match grade levels. This

8/14/2019 Dolch (High Frequency) Word Lists & Overview

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represents a sequence rather than an order of difficulty, and matches thefrequency of words according to grade-level material. Despite thiscategorization, it is generally recommended that all of the words in all thecategories be learned during the first grade.

Pre-primer (In South Africa we refer to this as Grade RR (Gr 1)

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 (In South Africa we refer to this as Grade R) (Gr2)

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 (Gr3)

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 (Gr4)

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 (Gr5)

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

Dolch 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