What are Sight Words?
Sight words are words that good readers should instantly recognize without having to "figure them out". The ability to recall these words without having to sound them out is essential because some words do not sound like their spellings would suggest. If a reader has to "sound out" every word they may lose the speed and fluency needed to determine the author's message. Sight words are sometimes referred to as Fry Words, Dolch Words or high-frequency words.
Sight words are those words that appear most often in printed materials. According to Robert Hillerich, "Just three words I, and, the account for ten percent of all words in printed English." According to Fry et al. (The Reading Teacher's Book of Lists, 2000) the 25 most common words make up about one-third of our written material, while the 100 most common words actually make up about 50 percent of the material we read.
Research has shown that reading skill improves with the growth of a reader's sight word vocabulary.
The following sight words are used at each grade level:
Click on the following link for sight words activities:
http://rbeaudoin333.homestead.com/sightvocab_1.html
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