Reading and spelling
Sight words and spelling
The words that don’t play fair — said, because, one — graded by age and drilled by ear, the way a spelling test actually works.
Start a spelling race →What sight words are
Most words can be sounded out. These can’t, or not reliably: a child who attacks said phonetically arrives at “say-id”. Edward Dolch collected the worst offenders in 1936 and the list has barely moved since, because the words that break the rules are the common ones. Between them they account for something like half the words in a typical children’s book, which is why they get memorised rather than decoded.
The lists
Graded by age rather than by school year, because Dolch’s own grades are American and the mapping to other systems is approximate. Pick the one that matches the reader, not the one that matches the label.
| List | Age | Words | Starts with |
|---|---|---|---|
| First words | Ages 4–5 | 40 | a, and, away, big… |
| Next steps | Ages 5–6 | 52 | all, am, are, at… |
| Building up | Ages 6–7 | 41 | after, again, an, any… |
| Getting fluent | Ages 7–8 | 46 | always, around, because, been… |
| Tricky ones | Ages 8–9 | 41 | about, better, bring, carry… |
| Everyday things | Ages 5–7 | 93 | apple, baby, back, ball… |
Heard, not copied
A spelling card that shows you the word is a handwriting exercise. So the word is read out and the screen stays blank until you’ve typed it — the same thing a teacher does, using the voice already installed on the device. Nothing is recorded and nothing is sent anywhere. On a device with no voice available, the word flashes up briefly and then hides, which is weaker but still recall rather than transcription.
Younger readers can switch to spot it: hear the word, pick it out of four. Recognition first, spelling second.
Your own lists
The lists above are a starting point, not the point. Paste in this week’s spellings — a newline, a comma or a semicolon between them, however they arrived — and they become a deck like any other, with their own records and their own trouble list. Save one as a file and another family can open it and get their own copy.
Everything stays on the device it was typed on. There is no account to make and nothing is uploaded, so a shared list travels the way a photocopy would: because someone sent it.
Practising it properly
Words that come out wrong, or come out slowly, collect in a trouble list you can drill on their own. A word only counts as known once it’s right three times running and under four seconds — which is the same bar the times tables are held to, and for the same reason: recall, not working it out.
Short and frequent beats long and rare. Ten words a day will move a list faster than a whole list once a week.
Start a spelling race →