I came across this game earlier today and just had to share it with you! I cannot wait to try it out with my class tomorrow. I am always looking for fun ways to practice high frequency words. For those of you using Jolly Phonics these are your “tricky words”.

Dolch Word Lists were compiled by Edward Dolch PhD in 1936. The lists were based on popular children’s books of his era. Dolch analysed the books and ordered the words by frequency of occurrence.  This culminated in lists of  220 that need to be instantly recognized  in order to achieve reading fluency. Most of these words cannot be “sounded out” and have to be learned by sight.

The 220 words were subdivided into lists: Pre-primer, Primer, First Grade, Second Grade, Third Grade and a separate list of 95 nouns.

Roughly, these levels correspond to class levels as follows:

• Pre-primer & Primer = Junior Infants
• First Grade = Senior Infants
• Second Grade = First Class
• Third Grade = Second Class

It is great to find fun, free games that encourage children to play again and again, thus achieving mastery.  Even if your child is not being taught these words in school it would be fantastic to encourage him/her to play. Dolch words are so, so important for reading fluency and are,unfortunately, not commonly taught in Irish schools 😦

Click here for a link to play Sight Word Bingo.

Have fun,

Miss Mernagh 🙂