Sight Words: What They Are and Which to Teach First
What sight words are, the Dolch lists from pre-primer to 3rd grade (315 words), and a simple 5-minute-a-day way to teach them at home.
By the TurantTools Learn team · Updated October 19, 2026 · 4 min read
“The”, “said”, “was”, “you”: these little words appear on almost every page of a children's book, and many of them can't be sounded out. Learning to read them instantly, “by sight”, frees up your child's brain for the rest of the sentence.
What are sight words?
Sight words are very common words that children learn to recognise at a glance. Some are tricky because they break phonics rules (“said”, “one”, “who”); others are simply so common that reading them instantly makes reading smoother. US Common Core asks kindergarteners to read common high-frequency words by sight.
The Dolch lists
The best-known lists were made by Edward Dolch in the 1930s and 40s from the words that appeared most in children's books. There are 315 words in all, in 6 lists:
| List | Usually for | Words |
|---|---|---|
| Pre-primer | Pre-K | 40 |
| Primer | Kindergarten | 52 |
| First grade | Grade 1 | 41 |
| Second grade | Grade 2 | 46 |
| Third grade | Grade 3 | 41 |
| Nouns | Pre-K to Grade 2 | 95 |
The first 10 pre-primer words are: a, and, away, big, blue, can, come, down, find, for.
How to teach them (5 minutes a day)
- Pick 5 new words. More than that at once is hard to remember.
- Show the card, say the word, and use it in a short sentence together.
- Mix the new words with ones your child already knows, so most cards feel easy.
- Hunt for the words in a picture book: finding them in real reading is the goal.
- A word is learned when your child reads it instantly on three different days. Then add a new one.