Sight Words Practice (Dolch)

About the Sight Words Practice (Dolch)

Practise Edward W. Dolch’s sight words, the 220 “service words” from pre-primer to third grade and his 95 common nouns, as flash cards. The page shows one word in large letters, the child reads it aloud, and a parent or teacher taps Read it or Not yet. Every child gets their own record, so you can see at a glance which words are known, which are still being learned and which have not been tried. A word counts as known once it has been read correctly on three different days with no “not yet” in between (you can change the number), so one lucky reading does not tick it off.

You can also print flashcards (8, 12 or 20 to a page) and four kinds of worksheet: read, trace and write, find and circle, missing letters, and a record sheet for checking on paper. Each can use a whole list or only the words a child does not know yet.

Common uses

• Five minutes of word practice at home, with a record that shows a child getting further each week.
• Teachers checking each pupil on a list and printing flashcards of just the words that pupil still needs.
• Tutors and reading volunteers keeping a separate record for every child they work with.
• Homework sheets (trace and write, find and circle, missing letters) made from the words a child is practising.

About the Dolch lists

Edward W. Dolch published his basic sight vocabulary for beginning readers: 220 “service words”, the small words that hold sentences together, such as the, said and because, and no nouns. He listed 95 common nouns separately. The service words are usually split into five lists named after American reading levels: pre-primer (40 words), primer (52), first grade (41), second grade (46) and third grade (41).

A study that repeated Dolch’s work questioned some of his choices but found the list still useful, because its words make up more than half of the words in everyday reading, for children and adults alike. Many of them cannot be sounded out letter by letter (said, once, the), which is why they are practised until a child recognises them at a glance.

Some copies of the lists online add left to the second-grade list and have goat, woman and women instead of goodbye among the nouns, which makes 221 and 97 words. This page keeps to Dolch’s 220 service words and 95 nouns.

How progress is counted

Each child has a record in this browser. A word is not practised yet until it has been shown, learning once it has been marked, and known when it has been read correctly on three different days with no “not yet” in between. The days do not have to follow each other on the calendar: Monday, Wednesday and Thursday count as three. Reading a word correctly twice on one day counts as one day, and a “not yet” starts the count again, including for the rest of that day. Under Count a word as known after, choose 1, 2, 3 or 5 days.

If a child plainly knows a word already, open the list under Progress and tap the word to mark it known; a later “not yet” takes the mark away again. Download CSV gives every word of every list for every learner, with its status, its counts and the days counted towards known, for a spreadsheet.

Tips for good sessions

• Keep sessions short: ten words is easier to keep cheerful than forty. Stop while it is still fun.
• Tap Read it only when the word was read correctly without help. Sounding a word out slowly is a good effort, but it shows the word is not yet known by sight.
• Once a list is going well, set Show each word for to 2 seconds or 1 second to check that the words are recognised quickly, not worked out. Show again (S) brings a hidden word back.
• After a session, use the missed words in a sentence together, or print them as flashcards for the fridge.
• Move on to the next list when most of the current one is known, and keep the earlier lists in occasional practice.

Flashcards and worksheets

• Flashcards: 8, 12 or 20 cards to a sheet, each word as large as it fits, to cut out along the dashed lines; optionally with the list name in the corner for sorting.
• Read, trace and write: 8 words to a page. The child reads the word, traces the grey letters and writes it on the handwriting lines.
• Find and circle: 9 rows to a page. Each row shows a word and 8 words to search, with the word three times among look-alikes.
• Missing letters: 16 words to a page with one letter left out, and a word bank of the page’s words at the top.
• Record sheet: every chosen word with three columns to tick, for checking a child on paper over three days.

Every worksheet has space for the child’s name and the date, and every sheet fits A4 and US Letter paper. Use your browser’s print dialog to print it or to save it as a PDF.

Limitations

• The page does not listen to the child: an adult (or the child) marks each word.
• Progress is kept in this browser only. Use Back up progress to move it to another browser or device, and Restore there.
• The lists are Dolch’s American English words. Schools in other countries often teach their own lists of common words.
• Hear it uses an English voice on your device. When the device has none, the button is not shown, so the words never go to an online voice.
• Up to 30 learners can be kept in one browser.

Privacy

Everything runs in your browser. Learners’ names and progress are saved only in this browser’s storage and are never uploaded. Delete learner and Reset progress remove them, and a backup file goes only where you save it.