Sight Words vs. High Frequency Words, and How to Make them Stick

Photo by Gautam Arora on Unsplash

If you have a child in early elementary school, you probably have heard both of these terms. You may have heard them used interchangeably. Sometimes teachers call them by a million other terms (red words, snap words, etc).

However, there is a difference and, over time, I’ve changed my view on how students learn high-frequency words most effectively.

What are high-frequency words?

High-frequency words are the most commonly used words in the English language. These words might be regular or irregular, meaning that they may or may not follow typical spelling patterns. High-frequency words, because they appear so frequently, are essential for students to learn.

They are also high-utility words in writing.

Examples of high-frequency word lists include the Fry Word Lists and the Dolch Lists. Dr. Edwaerd Dolch published the Dolch list in 1936. Dolch believed that we should teach children to learn words based on their shape.

He even said that in first grade, kids should only learn sight words (by memory) and that phonics can wait until 2nd grade. EEK! Granted, this was a long time ago, but this is not in line with the science of how brains learn to read.

The Dolch list contains 220 words. The list does not include nouns, which came as a separate set of 95 words published later.

Edward Fry published the Fry list in1947. It contains 1,000 high-frequency words broken into10 groupings of 100.

BOTH lists were created based on “whole-word reading.” This means that a child learns a new word by studying it as a whole and looking at its shape. It’s memorizing the whole word, rather than breaking it down according to phonics.

It's sort of like memorizing math facts (rote recall) without having the faintest idea of what those facts mean (number sense).

At some point, that system falls apart for readers (or like me, for young mathematicians) as books (and math) become harder.

What are Sight Words?

Sight Words are words that you know immediately. You do not need to decode them - rather, you look at the word and know what it says right away. These are personal to each reader. Again, they might be regularly or irregularly spelled.

A child’s first sight word might be their name, but you won’t see their name on a “high-frequency word list.”

A sight word CAN, and often will be, a high-frequency word.

Why are they important?

The goal of high-frequency words is for them to become sight words. We don't want so much cognitive load spent on decoding these words that pop up again and again in the texts we read. Students need to learn these words and have automaticity when reading them.

There is a better way to go about that learning process.

How we THOUGHT high-frequency words are learned:

Many of us think that we need to teach high-frequency words by showing them to children many, many times. Maybe we use flashcards, word hunts, worksheets, or games. The technique boils down to rote memorization of the whole word. Repeat, repeat, repeat until it sticks.

The problem is, sometimes that word just doesn’t stick.

Important to mention: There is absolutely no problem with games, word hunts, flashcards, and worksheets. Students need to learn and study the word first, though.

Learning and studying the phonics of a word is different from presenting the word as a string of letters to memorize.

What we know now about learning high-frequency words

In 2000, the National Institute of of Child Health and Human Development published an important study. It indicated that new and struggling readers will have greater success when taught to decode words using phonics.

David Kilpatrick, a reading researcher and the author, has written a lot on the topic of sight words and orthographic mapping.

Kilpatrick explains orthographic mapping as “the process we use to permanently store words in long-term memory." When we map words, we match their sounds (phonemes) to their corresponding letters (graphemes).

He also says:

“To be good orthographic mappers, children need to develop three skills:

1) automatic letter-sound associations

2) highly proficient phoneme awareness

3) word study

What we need to do is connect sounds (phonemes) to the written word.”

It can be very easy to say that we need to memorize irregularly spelled words. However, Kilpatrick explains that often only one letter-sound relationship is irregular. We can decode the rest of the word as expected.

Try orthographic mapping instead of memorizing words by sight!

A more effective method of learning high-frequency words is to study letter-sound patterns and identify irregularities. This can be done through orthographic mapping.

Back to definitions: What is a Heart Word?

Now we’re at the advanced level!

A heart word is a high-frequency word that contains an irregular spelling pattern.

When mapping a new word, children are taught to put a heart over the irregular part of the word. This helps them remember the irregular letter-sound relationship. The rest of the word can be decoded normally.

In essence, we learn the tricky part by heart.

Sight word lists: What to do about those?

Often kids receive lists to learn in school. These will usually come from the Dolch or Fry lists I mentioned earlier.

This is okay. Kids need to know these words.

Yet, we need to look at the amount of words presented and the order of those words. For example, on the Dolch list you will find the words “yellow’ and “funny” on the pre-primer list (aka pre-kindergarten). You will not see the word “if” until you get to the 3rd grade list.

"Cut" is another word that doesn't appear until the third grade list. It is a very decodable CVC word (consonant-vowel-consonant). A child should be able to read such a word in kindergarten.

Instead, I think we should teach high-frequency words in groupings according to the patterns found within them. This is a separate tangent, but I’ve been using resources created by Sarah’s Teaching Snippits.

We can still use the Dolch and Fry lists. But we need to include explicit phonics and decoding instruction, too. And we need to be more thoughtful about the order and the amount of the words we are presenting.

Think about the word "decode" for a minute. Decode. De-code. Literally, kids need the skills to break down the code of English in order to read. The goal of decoding is to eventually not need to decode any more.

If we focus on memorization of words, a child will get to second or third grade and find tons of multisyllabic words in their books. They may not have the decoding skills essential to read these words.

Then, the problems pile up because the child spends so much of their cognitive load on reading the words. There isn't energy left over for comprehension and fluency.

Our brains just aren’t built to memorize words upon words. We have limited storage capacity.

So as a parent, what can you do?

If as a parent, you receive a massive list of words to help your child memorize… here is your permission to slow down.

Don’t feel pressure to know all the rules and spelling patterns.

Take it word by word.

Break down the list and work on a couple of words at a time. Point out each part of the word, name the sounds. Allow your child to learn to read that word, rather than memorize it.

This will help your child:

• Learn the word and commit it to long-term memory

• Learn the ability to approach new words armed with tools to decode them

There is so much to say on this topic. Consider this post an introduction. Please share your questions or thoughts below and stay tuned for games, activities, and additional tips for teaching and learning sight words at home!