Sight Words

Sight Words
High Frequency Words
Dolch Words
Fry Words
Popcorn Words

No matter what you call them, these are words that students need to read quickly and accurately to increase their fluency.

Sight words are taught as early as Kindergarten.  There are a few theories as to what actually constitutes a "Sight Word".  For a CCSD definition (with early readers), sight words are the words that do not easily sound out, and are frequently used. 

See the links below for word lists and games to practice high-frequency words.  Please also see the district letter below regarding sight words and how they fit in with the district philosophy about learning to read.

In grades K-2 there is an emphasis placed on learning Zeno’s 108 High Frequency Words. These “… words were selected after review of sight word lists and sight word literature that suggests that sight word lists primarily consist of high frequency words (Pratt, Martin & Christ, 2010). The primary source for high frequency words in printed American English is the Educator’s Word Frequency Guide (Zeno, Ivens, Millard, & Duvvuri, 1995). Prior to the development of sight word measures, a study was carried out to administer the first 1,000 words from Zeno's high frequency list to estimate the difficulty of those sight words. Subsequently, the first 50 or 150 sight words were selected for the measure based on an analysis of word difficulty and word frequency.”

(Forces on our Focus Blog, Lehmann) "Zeno's high frequency words research" refers to a study conducted by researchers named Zeno, Ivens, Millard, and Duvvuri, which found that a relatively small set of around 107 words, often called "Zeno words," account for roughly 50% of all words encountered in written text, making them crucial for developing reading fluency by recognizing them instantly as "sight words." The Zeno word list provided below lists the words in order of frequency (high to low). As a district we have shifted our focus away from teaching the sight words in Saxon Phonics, to being more explicit in teaching the Zeno list in order to encompass more of the philosophy around the Science of Reading (SOR) and Science of Reading Instruction (SORI).

download ccsd zeno's 108 high frequency word list

download ccsd zeno's 108 high frequency word cards