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Dolch Sight Words: The List, by Grade Level

What the Dolch word list is, who made it, and how the 220 service words and 95 nouns are grouped by grade.

The Dolch word list is a set of 220 common “service” words plus 95 nouns that reading specialist Edward William Dolch identified as words young children need to recognize by sight. It is grouped into levels from pre-primer through third grade.

Dolch built the list by comparing several earlier word-frequency studies of children’s reading material, then keeping the words that showed up again and again. He published his findings through his work on primary reading instruction in the 1930s and 1940s, and the list has been reprinted in classrooms and homeschools ever since (Journal of Reading, “The Dolch Basic Word List, Then and Now”).

What is the Dolch word list?

It is a list of 315 words split into two parts: 220 “service” words (pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, adjectives, verbs and adverbs) and a separate list of 95 common nouns (Florida Department of Education). Dolch left nouns out of the main list because he considered them tied to specific topics rather than the connective words every sentence needs.

This page covers the service-word list. The 95 nouns have their own page: Dolch nouns list. Both pages sit inside our broader language arts section.

Why are they called “sight words”?

They are called sight words because many of them don’t sound out the way regular letter patterns do, so children learn to recognize them on sight instead of decoding them letter by letter. Words like “said,” “was,” and “the” fall into this group.

Not every high-frequency word is irregular. Many common words are fully decodable with phonics, so sight-word practice works best alongside phonics instruction, not instead of it. For more on that connection, see our phonics page.

How are the 220 words grouped by grade level?

The 220 service words are split into five levels: pre-primer, primer, first grade, second grade and third grade, moving from the words a beginning reader needs first to words used in more complex sentences. The full grade-by-grade tables are in the Florida Department of Education’s reference copy of the list (Florida Department of Education).

We verified the pre-primer level word for word against that source. It has 40 words:

a, and, away, big, blue, can, come, down, find, for, funny, go, help, here, I, in, is, it, jump, little, look, make, me, my, not, one, play, red, run, said, see, the, three, to, two, up, we, where, yellow, you.

We did not re-verify the exact word-for-word contents of the primer, first, second and third grade tables in this pass, so we are not reprinting them here. Use the source link above for the complete, checked tables rather than a list we have not confirmed.

How do I teach sight words?

The most effective approach combines short, repeated practice with phonics instruction rather than pure memorization. Reading researcher Timothy Shanahan notes that many “sight words” are only sight words because a child hasn’t learned the phonics pattern yet, and that pairing high-frequency words with their spelling patterns helps children retain them better than flashcard drilling alone (Reading Rockets).

  • Short, frequent sessions. Five to ten minutes a day beats one long weekly drill.
  • Point out the pattern. For a word like “make,” show the silent-e pattern instead of treating it as unsound-out-able.
  • Use the words in real sentences. Flash cards help recognition, but reading the word in a sentence builds actual fluency.
  • Mix levels as needed. A child can work on pre-primer and primer words at the same time if that matches where they are.

This section covers general classroom and home practice. It isn’t a substitute for a reading specialist’s evaluation if a child is well behind grade-level expectations.

Sources