Phonic

Children Learning Reading

The Most Common
Sight Words

Jim Yang

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IMPORTANT COPYRIGHT NOTICE

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CHILDREN LEARNING READING ©
Copyright 2010, ChildrenLearningReading.com (Jim Yang)

All Rights Reserved Worldwide

First Edition 2010. 1.1.3

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DISCLAIMER AND LEGAL NOTICE

This program is for educational and informative purposes only and
is not intended as educational, professional, developmental, or
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program will not cure or correct any disabilities, difficulties,
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Contents

IMPORTANT COPYRIGHT NOTICE........................................................... 3
DISCLAIMER AND LEGAL NOTICE ........................................................... 4
Sight Words ........................................................................................... 6
Are We Born Poor Readers? .................................................................. 7
Phonics, Phonemic Awareness, and Whole Language Method of
Learning to Read.................................................................................... 9
The Most Common Sight Words .......................................................... 12

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Sight Words

Sight words are words that are known by a reader
automatically, without the need to sound it out or
decode it. These are words that are pronounced without
decoding the spelling of the word. Sight words also
relate to the "whole word" approach to learning to read.
The whole language method of learning to read simply
expects a child to "read" when presented reading
material, and by memorizing sight words.

However, as more research brings to light the
advantages phonics and phonemic awareness
instructions have over whole language teaching
methods, more parents are becoming aware of teaching
their children using phonics and phonemic awareness.
Many parents today are concerned about the method
that is being used to teach their children to read, and
rightfully so. The whole language method is more of a
method of "word memorization", where the child is
taught to look at printed words as whole configurations,
much like looking at Chinese characters.

Teaching phonemic awareness skills involves the
breakdown of words into individual sounds (phonemes),
and then joining the parts to form, or sound out the
words. By contrast, whole language learning stresses the
flow and meaning of the text, where "sounding out"
words is not used. The words are decoded through its
larger context, and word memorization plays a key role.
What would you rather do, memorize hundreds or even

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thousands of words based on shapes, or learn a
systematic way of reading?

Are We Born Poor Readers?

Did you know that 38% of all grade four students have
reading abilities below the lowest basic level as
determined by the National Assessment of Educational
Progress (NAEP)? The NAEP is the only ongoing survey of
what students know and tracks their performance in
various academic subjects for the United States. In their
report, the NAEP found that 38% of grade four students
had reading achievement below basic levels, with a basic
level reading score being 208.

To put things in perspective, the US reading scale has an
upper limit score of 500, with average reading scores for
grade 4 (217), grade 8 (264), and grade 12 (291). The
grade 4 reading achievement levels are categorized by
the NAEP as Advanced (268 score), Proficient (238 score),
and Basic (208 score), and the basic reading
achievement level is defined as follows by the NAEP:

Fourth-grade students performing at the Basic level
should demonstrate an understanding of the overall
meaning of what they read. When reading text
appropriate for fourth graders, they should be able to
make relatively obvious connections between the text
and their own experiences and extend the ideas in the
text by making simple inferences. [1]

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Unfortunately, over a third of all grade four students
read at levels below basic.

English is not meant to be memorized as shapes and
sight objects. It becomes very difficult to learn to read by
memorizing and recognizing shapes. Phonics and
teaching phonemic awareness skills requires you to
memorize only the letters and the sounds they
represent. With this method, children as young as two
years old can learn to read successfully, and
comprehend what they are reading. Try teaching a
young child with the whole language learning method,
see how successful they will be at memorizing hundreds
of "shapes". Studies have shown consistently that
teaching by using phonics will routinely produce
successful readers.

Teaching phonics and phonemic awareness is clearly a
superior method of teaching children how to read.

In the USA, over 30 million adults (14%) are considered
functionally illiterate, and are unable to perform simple
everyday literacy activities. [2] This however, should not
be surprising since over one third of all children cannot
even achieve basic reading competency by the time they
are in grade four. Why are these children failing at
literacy? Perhaps it is a result of the poor reading
instructions they receive.

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Phonics, Phonemic Awareness, and Whole Language
Method of Learning to Read

It has been proven time and again, that teaching
phonemic awareness skill produces superior reading and
spelling abilities than whole language teaching methods.
Thousands of studies have confirmed this, and the
National Reading Panel has also made a clear statement
about this.

In a recent study, the researchers stated: "many in-
service teachers are not knowledgeable in the basic
concepts of the English language". Their study found
that even though the teachers may be well versed in
children's literature; however, they do not know how to
address the basic building blocks of language and
reading. In their survey of instructors conducted, the
researchers found that the teachers performed poorly
on the concepts relating to morphemes and phonemes.
In another second study, over 80% of the interviewed
instructors agreed that phonics is a desirable method to
use for beginning reading instructions. [3]

Some argue that a child will acquire a knowledge of
phonics on his or her own after learning to read using
whole language methods. While this may be true for
some children, it is hardly the case for the other children
with reading difficulties. When a child is taught to read
using a whole word approach, they develop a habit of
looking at all the words by their whole configurations,
and this prevents the child from seeing the phonetic

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structure of the words. Real readers who learned to read
by learning phonemic awareness skills do not need clues
or cues to help them recognize shapes - they develop an
automatic ability to decode the letters and words.

Research on phonemic awareness has shown time after
time that phonemic awareness skills predicted reading
and spelling success of children in school.

When teaching phonemic awareness, children are
taught the smallest units of sound, or phonemes. During
the teaching process, children are taught to focus on the
phonemes, and learn to manipulate the phonemes in
words. Studies have identified phonemic awareness and
letter knowledge as the two best school-entry predictors
of how well children will learn to read during the first 2
years of instruction. In a review of phonemic awareness
research, the National Reading Panel (NRP) identified
1,962 citations, and the results of their meta-analysis
were impressive. The NRP publication stated:

Overall, the findings showed that teaching children to
manipulate phonemes in words was highly effective
under a variety of teaching conditions with a variety of
learners across a range of grade and age levels and that
teaching phonemic awareness to children significantly
improves their reading more than instruction that lacks
any attention to phonemic awareness (PA).

Specifically, the results of the experimental studies led
the Panel to conclude that PA training was the cause of
improvement in students’ phonemic awareness, reading,
and spelling following training. The findings were

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replicated repeatedly across multiple experiments and
thus provide converging evidence for causal claims. [4]

As can be clearly seen, teaching children phonemic
awareness early on significantly improves their reading
and spelling abilities. Furthermore, the NRP research
stated that these beneficial effects of phonemic
awareness teaching goes well beyond the end of training
period. The NRP phonemic awareness research also
found that the most effective teaching method was to
systematically teach children to manipulate phonemes
with letters, and teaching children in small groups.

Phonemic awareness teaching provides children with an
essential knowledge of the alphabet system, and a
foundation in reading and spelling. The NRP has stated
that phonemic instructions is a necessary instructional
component within a complete reading program.

Below are two other studies done on phonemic
awareness, and its effects on reading abilities. In a study
involving children aged 6 to 7 years old, researchers
found that the few readers at the beginning of grade
one exhibited high phonemic awareness scored at least
close to perfect in the vowel substitution task, compared
to none in children of the same age group who could not
read when they entered school. The research also stated
that phonemic awareness differences before instruction
predicted the accuracy of alphabetic reading and
spelling at the end of grade one independent from IQ.
Children with high phonemic awareness at the start of
grade one had high reading and spelling achievements at
the end of grade one; however, some of the children

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with low phonemic awareness had difficulties learning
to read and spell. The study suggested that phonemic
awareness is the critical variable for the progress in
learning to read. [5]

Another study looked at phonemic awareness and
emergent literacy skills of 42 children with an average
age of 5 years and 7 months. The researchers indicated
that relations between phonemic awareness and
spelling skills are bidirectional where phonemic
awareness improved spelling skills, and spelling
influenced the growth in phonemic skills. [6]

It is clear that with the conclusions made by the National
Reading Panel and other research studies on the
benefits of phonemic awareness, children should be
taught phonemic awareness at a young age before
entering school. This helps them build a strong
foundation for learning to read and spell.

The Most Common Sight Words

In our book of sight words, we list some of the most
commonly used sight words; however, this book of sight
words is not meant to help the parents teach their
children to read using the "whole language" method of
reading and memorizing sight words. Rather, it is
presented as a reference guide for parents to help make
them aware of some of the most common sight words in
the English language.

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We have a rather short list of sight words below. There
are hundreds of words that are considered sight words;
however, in our list, we generally only list those sight
words that cannot be sounded out or decoded from its
spelling.

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able laugh
any many
are
be me
bear my
bind no
blue one
both she
buy shoe
by so
bye some
carry the
their

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come there
could to

do true
don't two
due was
eye want
find we
four were
glue what
where
go who
guy won't
great

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he would
head you
your
I
kind young

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Notes:

1. NAEP 1998 Reading Report Card for the Nation and the States
March 1999
Authors: Patricia L. Donahue, Kristin E. Voelkl, Jay R. Campbell, and John Mazzeo

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_illiteracy

3. J Learn Disabil. 2009 Sep-Oct;42(5):392-402. Epub 2009 Jun 19.
Why elementary teachers might be inadequately prepared to teach reading.
Joshi RM, Binks E, Hougen M, Dahlgren ME, Ocker-Dean E, Smith DL.
Texas A&M University, USA.

4. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. (2000). Report of the
National Reading Panel. Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the
scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction (NIH
Publication No. 00-4769). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

5. Cognition. 1991 Sep;40(3):219-49.
The relationship of phonemic awareness to reading acquisition: more consequence than
precondition but still important.
Wimmer H, Landerl K, Linortner R, Hummer P.
University of Salzburg, Austria.

6. Exp Child Psychol. 2002 Jun;82(2):93-115.
Emergent literacy skills and training time uniquely predict variability in responses to
phonemic awareness training in disadvantaged kindergartners.
Hecht SA, Close L.

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