This doesn’t fit with how the brain learns to read.
So should we get lists of sight words and get our students to memorize them using flash cards? A sight-word vocabulary refers to the pool of words a student can effortlessly recognize. However, reading researchers have a different definition of sight words.Ī sight word is a word that is instantly and effortlessly recalled from memory, regardless of whether it is phonically regular or irregular. We often define sight words as words that kids can’t sound out – words like the, for example.
Traditionally, when teachers say “sight words,” they are referring to high frequency words that children should know by sight.
