Spell 1st™ for Sight Words
The study of Sight Words has been one component - phonics is another common component - of early reading programs for 80 years. There are in fact, a number of word lists that are taught today in first grade, including the Dolch Sight Words, the Fry Instant Words or High Frequency Words, the Sitton No Excuses Words and a handful of others. At their core, they are all based on a surprising fact: a small percentage of words - many of them irregularly spelled - make up a large percentage of literature.
The Dolch list of 220 sight words, originally developed in 1936, by Edward M. Dolch, is a list of the most frequently occurring words in Children's literature. The Fry 1000 Instant Words, by Edward Fry from Rutgers, is a list of 1000 words, in order of frequency, that occur in all literature. The first 100 make up 50% of all written material. The 100 words for first graders in the Spell 1st - Home Edition are a combination of Fry's first 100 as well as Dolch words.
Edward Fry recently contributed an interesting article, "What's So Good about a Word List", to the 2001 Wisconsin English Journal. His work on teaching reading is widely cited in other academic papers. It's always more interesting, of course, to hear what the original author has to say. Here is a quote from his conclusion:
In summary, we recommend teaching the Instant Words because:
So few of them make up such a high percentage of all written material that learning Instant Words gives beginning readers a big boost
They must be recognized “instantly” for reading fluency and spelled without hesitation for writing fluency, and
They cannot be mastered using phonics instruction.
For a fun visualization of word frequencies, visit the WordCount.org website and then click "Next Word" to scroll through the list.
For a bit of history on Sight Words, visit the myronmason.net web site and click on the "Sight Words" article.
