What Are Sight Words?

“Sight words” is a common term in reading with various meanings.

When the term is applied to early reading instruction, it typically refers to about 100 words reappearing on almost any page of text. According to Robert Hillerich, just three words I, and, and the account for 10 percent of all words in printed English. Dr. Edward Fry et al. (The Reading Teacher’s Book of Lists, 2000) state that the 25 most common words make up about one-third of our written material, while the 100 most common words make up about 50 percent of the material we read.

In addition to these words being very frequent, many of them cannot be “sounded out.” Children are expected to learn them by sight, i.e., recognizing them without any attempt to sound them out.

For others, sight words mean words recognized instantly, without hesitation or further analysis. Fluent reading requires that most of the words in a selection be sight words. The child must use other word recognition strategies for only a few words (5 to 10 percent). A piece that contains too many non-sight words is usually too difficult and frustrating. Research has shown that reading skill improves with the growth of a reader’s sight word vocabulary.

English is tough stuff! Unlike some other languages, written English has an inconsistent phoneme-grapheme relationship or spelling pattern. The relationship between the letter and its sound equivalent is not always predictable. The letter a, for example, is given a different sound in each of the following typical first-grade words: at, Jane, ball, father, was, saw, and are. Another example of this complexity is the phoneme of the long i, which has a different spelling pattern in each of the following words: aisle, aye, I, eye, ice, tie, high, choir, buy, sky, rye, pine, and type. To further complicate the problem of learning to read English, many of the most frequently used sight words in first-grade books have irregular spelling patterns.

The table below illustrates 220 basic sight words that students should know. These words are divided into groups according to their difficulty. One way to learn sight words is by actually reading stories. Basal readers are written so that sight words appear many times in context. Another natural way to expose children to sight words is through language experience stories. Many of the words in these stories will be from the sight word list.

220 Basic sight words

Prepimer	Primer	First	Second	Third
the	when	many	know	don’t
of	who	before	while	does
and	will	must	last	got
to	more	through	might	united
a	no	back	us	left
in	if	years	great	number
that	out	where	old	course
is	so	much	year	war
was	said	your	off	until
he	what	may	come	always
for	up	well	since	away
it	its	down	against	something
with	about	should	go	fact
as	into	because	came	through
his	than	each	right	water
on	them	just	used	less
be	can	those	take	public
at	only	people	three	put
by	other	Mr.	states	thing
I	new	how	himself	almost
this	some	too	few	hand
had	could	little	house	enough
not	time	state	use	far
are	these	good	during	took
but	two	very	without	head
from	may	make	again	yet
or	then	would	place	government
have	do	still	American	system
an	first	own	around	better
they	any	see	however	set
which	my	men	home	told
one	now	work	small	nothing
you	such	long	found	night
were	like	get	Mrs.	end
her	our	here	thought	why
all	over	between	went	called
she	man	both	say	didn’t
there	me	life	part	eyes
would	even	being	once	find
their	most	under	general	going
we	made	never	high	look
him	after	day	upon	asked
been	also	same	school	later
has	did	another	every	knew

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