Still other words follow rules of their own. They are the ones that “break the rules.” Many of these words (such as been or said) don’t follow the phonics sound because the pronunciation has been changed over time. What about the exceptions? Yes, there are those “oddball” words. Because these words contain more advanced phonics patterns that the child may not be developmentally ready for, these common words needed for early reading and spelling should be learned as sight words. While we may be completely convinced that sight words can fit right into phonics, the tricky part about this approach is that our younger readers may not be ready for phonics instruction with the more complicated phonics patterns (found in words like three or down). Sight Words and Phonics Instruction Do Not Always Line Up. Phonics patterns and sight words are taught side-by-side to help readers and spellers make the connection between the two.Ī Word of Caution with Sight Words and Phonics Instead of separating sight words and phonics, I also combined them in my recently released Short Vowel Word Study app. Most of the remaining words on the list (such as down, good, or first) fit nicely under other phonics skills typically taught in late 1st and early 2nd grade. The list shows the correlation between the Dolch lists (PP through 3rd grade), Fry’s first 100 and second 100 lists, and the short and long vowel patterns typically taught in Kindergarten and 1st grade. To demonstrate this, I went through both word lists and created a printable list, free to download HERE. And believe it or not, the majority of the high frequency words on those lists fit nicely with beginning phonics patterns. The two most common sight word lists available are the Dolch Word List and Fry’s Word List. Teaching Sight Words and Phonics Together So why not integrate some common sight words right into your phonics instruction? While this may be true of a small percentage of them, many of them actually fit right into the phonics rules young readers and spellers need to learn. If you look up the term sight words online, you are sure to find something along the lines of, “sight words cannot be sounded out” or that they are “non-phonetic” in nature. They actually have more in common than you might think. But sight words (I’m using sight words interchangeably with high frequency words for our purposes) and phonics do not have to be at opposing ends of the spectrum. I believe, based on reading research, that kids need both sight words and phonics as they are learning to read and write. In the world of literacy, the idea of learning words by sight has been highly debated for a few decades as the literacy pendulum has swung back and forth between phonics and sight words.
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