Generate sight word lists from the Dolch and Fry collections. Filter by grade level, hear every word read aloud, and drill with Practice Mode — no account, no download, no cost.
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Have you seen a young child struggle to say "the"?. "Tuh… huh… eh… the!" It's a struggle for them because the word "the" doesn't follow phonics rules. Neither do these words: of, have, or come. There comes a point in time where a child just needs to "memorize" these words.
That's the definition of sight words: common words that you see all the time, but you can't pronounce phonetically. Some educators call these "heart words" (since you learn them by heart); others call them "high frequency words." Whatever teachers call them, they're an integral part of a child's early language education. A child should be able to spot these words without trying to pronounce them. It's a strong indicator that a child is learning and becoming a strong reader.
When students learn these sight words, they can focus on the rest of the story rather than spending all their time figuring out how to read each word. And, most importantly, reading these words gives kids a sense of being able to read in general. So, although these 100 most common English words make up only about half of written language (the top 300 words cover 2/3 of all written words), they are so very important.
Most schools use one of two word lists to teach sight words: the Dolch list for Pre-K through 3rd grade and the Fry list for students from 4th grade through 9th grade. Both are FREE and widely used in classrooms throughout the United States. This generator creates both lists for you.
Dr. Edward William Dolch was a professor of education at the University of Illinois. In the 1930s and 1940s, he studied books that preschool children through 3rd grade read. Service words and common nouns were found to be used over and over again in children's literature. These words were categorized into 6 grade bands, totaling 220 service words and 95 common nouns, for a total of 315 words. Dolch word lists are still used in classrooms today for early childhood reading instruction. They are typically distributed by teachers as a list of words for children to study each week, and are known as the Dolch word list.
Dr. Edward Fry analyzed a wide variety of texts for grades 3 through 9 while compiling his word list for children to learn to read, first published in the 1950s and updated in 1980. The list consists of 1000 words in frequency order, from the most commonly used word in English to the 1000th most commonly used word. This list is typically shown in groups of 100 words, with the first 100 words accounting for about 50% of all written text.
For younger learners in the Pre-K through 2nd grade range, teachers often use Dolch word lists in the classroom to help your child learn to read. For children in the 3rd grade and up, or if you are looking at words from a frequency perspective and want to extend your study to include the higher grade levels, the Fry word list is a good choice. The first 100 words on the Fry list cover about 50% of all written text. Mastering the first 100 words on the Fry list is a big accomplishment for any age.
This generator was designed to contain both of these word lists. The Dolch word list is the most commonly taught word list in American classrooms, especially for students in Pre-K through 2nd grade. This generator starts with the Dolch list, and the grade bands for each grade level make it easy to set word-learning goals and monitor students' progress in learning to read word lists.
This tool is easy to use, and it takes a few clicks to narrow down the right word list.
Research shows that teaching sight words is more effective in short, frequent sessions than in long, occasional ones. Five to ten minutes a day for four to five days of the week will more effectively teach the same amount of words than one long Saturday session. Here are five practical methods for teaching sight words, one for each day of the week.
Flash cards. This is the "classic," and it's a good place to start. Take a list of words, read them with your child, then go into Practice Mode for the words they struggle to read. Remember to start with a small number of words, around 10-15, and take them off the list once your child can read the word correctly within a few attempts over several days.
Find it in a book. Pick a few words to focus on before reading a bedtime story. The following night, read the same story again and have your child read out every occurrence of the words they are focusing on for that night (e.g., "tonight we're looking for 'said' and 'because'"). By the end of the chapter your child will have seen each word used in actual sentences dozens of times.
Sentence building. Create a sentence using one of the target words and ask your child to repeat it and then make up their own. This activity helps your child better understand what a word means and how it is used in a sentence, rather than just being able to read it. For example, if the target word is "because," then your child needs to understand that this word is used to state the reason for something.
Rainbow writing. Write the sight word on a piece of paper with a pencil. Have your child then trace the word out with different colored markers. Have them say each letter as they write. This activity is especially good for kindergarten and first grade students since they are kinesthetically active learners. The activity is also quiet and can be completed in about 4 minutes.
Practice Mode with the lights low. I don't know why this works so well, but having the laptop on the kitchen table for a few minutes of Practice Mode with the lights dimmed really helps keep my kids focused for a couple of minutes. It seems to help them stay focused for a couple of minutes on the one word in the center of the screen instead of getting distracted by everything else on the bright computer screen.
As a general rule, children work toward certain goals, but every child learns at their own pace. Even if your child is a few months behind the average, it's not something to worry about. Most K-3 teachers are shooting for the following goals:
Pre-K: Read 10-20 of the 40 Dolch Pre-K words by the end of the year. Focus on learning the 5 words: "the," "I," "can," "go," and "a." If your child can read these 5 sight words, then they are off to a good start.
Kindergarten: By the end of Kindergarten, your child should have mastered the 40 Pre-K Dolch words and read about half of the 52 Kindergarten words. By the end of the year, your child should have read a total of 60-70 Dolch words.
1st Grade: Recognize all of the Pre-K and Kindergarten words, plus the 41 First Grade words by the end of the year. This totals approximately 133 Dolch service words. Typically, reading programs in 1st grade teach 5-10 new sight words every week from this list.
2nd Grade: The Dolch 2nd Grade list has approximately 179 words. Many of the 133 words from the previous two grades should be read instantly with no pause for consideration between words.
3rd Grade: Focus on reading the Nouns list, in addition to all of the Dolch Service Words. Third graders who learn all 220 words can read 75% of the words found in most elementary school books. That's when reading stops being so laborious and begins to be truly enjoyable.
After your child learns sight words, helping them spell them is the next natural step. We have a range of tools to help with this, including the 2nd Grade Spelling Bee Words and 3rd Grade Spelling Bee Words. For older students looking to build their vocabulary to compete in higher-level spelling bees, the SAT Vocabulary Words tool includes over 400 college-level words, listed alphabetically with word origin and an example sentence, and filterable by difficulty. All of our Word Tools are available from one hub page.