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Phonics

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Picture of sight words arranged by sound spelling pattern.

Sight Words

Sight words are often taught as whole words, but recent research shows that this method can harm reading development.

Brain research has found that the adult brain of good readers does not process words as wholes, but instead, as cognitive neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene explains in his article, The Massive Impact of Literacy on the Brain, by analyzing the individual letters and letter teams at the same time in a "massively parallel architecture." (1)

The speed of this parallel processing led early researchers to believe that the brain was processing the words as a whole, but recent brain research using more powerful technology has found the opposite.

The Dolch sight words and Fry instant words are often sent home to parents to be memorized as wholes, but most are easy to learn with phonics. The majority are completely phonetic and can be learned without learning any phoncis rules. All but 2 of the words on the lists can be learned when you add in a few simple phonics rules and patterns. The picture at the top of this page shows some commonly taught “sight words.”

Both the Fry and Dolch sight word lists are based on whole word methods and are high frequency words; they are not words that were selected because of their difficulty but instead, how common they are.

Teaching students to recognize sounds rather than memorize words promotes better reading habits. Phonics based methods build stronger literacy skills by helping learners understand how letters and sounds work together.

Teaching too many words by sight may lead to dyslexia-like symptoms. Sounding out words letter by letter encourages proper left-to-right eye movement, which is essential for reading fluently. (2)

Many of 40L's remedial students have developed guessing habits from too many sight words.

Dr. Linnea Ehri in Systematic Phonics Instruction: Findings of the National Reading Panel explains:

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"When phonics instruction is introduced after students have already acquired some reading skill, it may be more difficult to step in and influence how they read, because it requires changing students' habits.

For example, to improve their accuracy, students may need to suppress the habit of guessing words based on context and minimal letter cues, to slow down, and to examine spellings of words more fully when they read them. Findings suggest that using phonics instruction to remediate reading problems may be harder than using phonics at the earliest point to prevent reading difficulties."

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Most of the Dolch and Fry sight words are as easy to teach as teaching the sounds and then sounding out the words from left to right.

For the others, you teach the sound change and then have the student sound out the word. A few examples are shown below.

Consonant substitutions:

• Example: has, was

• Explanation: 's' sounds like 'z,' 'f' sounds like 'v.'

Vowel change:

• to, do, who – Uses "oo" as in "moo" instead.

• put – Uses "oo" as in "foot" instead of short 'u.'

Schwa: "schwa sound" instead of the expected vowel sound.

The schwa sound occurs especially often in words that begin with a or with the letter o followed by m, n, or v (3)

You teach exceptions by explaining sound changes before sounding out the word with the student.

A good phonics program will teach the “sight words” as part of the regular phonetic sequence. For example, the free to print Blend Phonics has a chart on page 43 showing when each of the Dolch sight words are taught.

40L made documents to show you step by step how to sound out the Dolch and Fry sight words with your student. There is a shorter plain version and the more fun but longer bookmark version.

To find out if your student has been taught too many sight words, you can have them take the MWIA, a test that measures the speed of reading holistic sight words verses a group of regular phonetic words. If your student reads the Holistic words more than 10% slower than the phonetic words or misses more phonetic words than holistic words, they could benefit from phonics instruction.

If your student has a slowdown on the MWIA or guesses at words, 40L's syllables spell success lessons make it easy to teach the missing phonics. These lessons include nonsense words and word lists to help stop the guessing habits caused by sight words and other balanced literacy practices.

Start your reading journey the right way—by learning every word with phonics!. With this powerful foundation, you'll unlock the ability to read anything and everything with confidence and ease.

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”The ability to sound out words is, in fact, a major underpinning that allows rapid recognition of words. This recognition is so fast that some people mistakenly believe it is happening 'by sight'.”

-Dr. Louisa Moats

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References:

1. Dehaene, Stanislas, "The Massive Impact of Literacy on the Brain and its Consequences for Education," Human Neuroplasticity and Education, 2011, p. 23 [Note: Stanislas Dehaene's 2009 book "Reading in the Brain" has a more detailed explanations and compares many different studies.]

2. Mosse, Hilde L, M.D., "The Complete Handbook of Children's Reading Disorders," 1982. Vol I, p. 83 - 84, 137 - 139.

3. Hanna, Paul R, Richard E. Hodges, and Jean S. Hanna, "Spelling: Structure and Strategies," 1971. p.44: " During the Middle English period, a certain type of angular writing was in vogue which resulted in some ambiguity for the reader when u was followed by an m, n, or u (sometimes written v or w.) Consequently, scribes replaced the u with o, and that spelling is retained in some words used today, e.g. come, monk, love, tongue, some, honey, son.

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