Learning high-frequency words by Sight is a critical part in learning to read.  As you search for sight word lists for your child to study, two different lists come up: Dolch Sight Words and Fry Sight Words. What are these lists? How do they differ? Do you choose one list or do your kids need to study both lists?

Let’s start at the beginning.

What are sight words?

Sight words are the most common words we teach young kids to learn by heart. Think of the most common English prepositions, conjunctions, adjectives, adverbs, verbs and articles and you’ll know the words that are on the list. They are words such as “an’, ‘blue’, ‘and’, ‘come’, ‘who’ and ‘does’.

Dr. Seuss is a good reference point for sight words. In fact, every word in Dr. Seuss’ The Cat in the Hat is a Dolch sight word.

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