Word List

1st Grade Sight Words

Fry words 26 to 100, the next 75 most common words in English, sorted for a first grader: 54 to sound out and only 21 to learn by heart, with worksheets for both.

Three word cards reading when, about and these, first grade sight words written on handwriting lines.

How many sight words should a first grader know?

There is no required number, but there is a well-known recommendation. Reading researcher Timothy Shanahan suggests the 100 most frequent words by the end of first grade. This page and the kindergarten sight words make that hundred between them: 25 there and 75 here.

In a Reading Rockets column, Shanahan puts those hundred words at about half the words a child meets in any text, which is why they repay the effort. How to teach sight words covers how to practice them, and what to do if your school’s list is longer, and sight word games has nine ways to practice the heart words without flashcards.

Why these 75 words?

They are words 26 to 100 on the Fry list, Edward Fry’s ranking of the most common words in English, which runs to 1,000 words in groups of a hundred. Fry did not assign grades, so the split across these pages is ours: the first 25 for kindergarten, these 75 for first grade, and the next hundred for second grade.

All but nine of the 75 are also on the Dolch list. The nine are word, each, other, more, number, people, than, oil and part.

Which of these words can your child sound out?

All but 21 of the 75 follow regular spelling patterns, so they are phonics practice rather than memory work. The sort assumes what a first grader can do by the end of the year: letter sounds, the two-letter sounds in words with th and in sh, ch and wh, a doubled letter, and the silent e in silent-e words. Twenty of the 54 use a pattern that comes a little later, and the section below names it.

The sort is by reading, not spelling. A word can be easy to read and still awkward to spell, which is why the 1st grade spelling list has rule-breakers of its own.

What if your school uses the Dolch list?

Every Dolch word is sorted too. The Dolch sight words page splits all 220, level by level, into the words to sound out and the heart words, with worksheets for each.

Which 1st grade sight words can your child sound out?

These 54 can be sounded out. Of those, 34 follow patterns a first grader is taught by the end of the year: letter sounds, two letters that make one sound (sh, ch, th, wh, ck, ng), a doubled letter, a silent e, a vowel that says its name at the end of a word, y as a vowel, s that says /z/, and all. The other 20 use a pattern that comes after first grade, such as ou in out, ee in see or or in more: read those together and name the pattern until it has been taught. The 2nd grade spelling list teaches those patterns from the spelling side.

On the sound boxes sheet, your child says a word, counts its sounds and writes one spelling in each box, so she fills two boxes and which fills three.

or
had
by
but
not
all
we
when
can
use
an
each
which
she
how
if
will
up
about
out
then
them
these
so
her
make
like
him
time
has
look
more
write
go
see
number
no
way
my
than
first
call
oil
its
now
find
long
down
day
did
get
made
may
part

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Printables for 1st Grade Sight Words to Sound Out

Which 1st grade sight words have to be learned by heart?

These 21 are heart words, words that break the usual spelling patterns and need to be learned by heart.

one
word
what
were
your
said
there
do
their
other
many
some
would
into
two
could
people
water
been
who
come

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Printables for 1st Grade Heart Words

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