Teaching Dolch Sight words to non-native English speakers: Here is what I did with the list: each set is composed of 60 words 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 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, yesДЎst 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, whenДўnd 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, yourДЈrd 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 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 Here is the list as Dolch presented it for native English speakers: (while native speakers are learning to recognize words they already know, ESL/EFL students shouldn't be asked to visually recognize words they have never learned - this is simply my opinion.) I teach the word lists but I break them up into 3 sections and order them by words students are likely to know at beginner levels of English. This is rather important when we begin to teach these words to ESL/EFL students. The Dolch Sight Word lists are broken up by level and frequency for that level of reader.

Others simply occur so often it's worth the time to memorize them as is or 'by sight' when the reader comes across them.

Many of these words are often difficult to portray with pictures or hard to sound out through phonics methods. These words are said to account for 50-75% of all words in children's books. Dolch surveyed hundreds of childrens books and came up with a list of 220 'service words' (pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and verbs) and 95 nouns which occurred over and over again in children's books.

1st grade dolch sight words