Dolch was an educationalist who created sight word and practices for reading fluency back in the 1930s. He has a list of the 220 most frequently encountered words in children’s literature Dolch Spelling Words and are commonly used as a teaching tool for reading, writing and spelling.

The popularity of his first list of 220 words inspired him to compile a separate 95-word list of nouns which can be used to teach reading and spelling fluency.

These were the most common nouns that appeared in Dolch’s original survey of children’s books but can still be used today. Sight words are those most common and frequent words used in our everyday reading and writing.

Amazingly, 50% of our written material is made up of 100 of these most frequently used words.

They are service words which hold ideas together, there is no picture attachment. They are best learned by sight, not by sounding out.

Learning these words by sight helps readers to maintain speed and fluency by not getting ‘caught up’ on meaning.

This story was written by Alex Brooks for Kidspot, New Zealand’s leading education resource for parents from sources including DolchSightWords