There are many, many ways to support young readers with these free, printable sight words. Homeschoolers, classroom teachers and parents will love using them with beginning readers.
We want all readers to aquire the skills they need to decode unfamiliar words so that most words become sight words. This aspect of learning to read is also referred to as aquiring ‘Instant’, ‘Whole’, ‘Look & Say’, ‘Dolch’, &/or ‘High Frequency’ words.
We know readers with large sight word vocabularies read more rapidly and more fluently than readers whose sight word vocabularies are small. It is logical that a reader who is able to ‘instantly’ recognize and understand the words he or she reads, will be faster and more fluent than a reader who must often pause in order to decode unfamiliar words.
We also know that some English words are not appropriate for ‘sounding out’ – they occur much too often and are not necessarily phonetic (for example ‘there’ does not sound anything like /t/+/h/+/e/+/r/+/e/).
Our free early literacy printables, including our sight word printables are in PDF format, if you don’t already have Adobe Reader, you will need to download it to access the printable sight words.
You will find our entire selection of free printable alphabets here and all of our early literacy printables here.
On our “Printables” page you will find links to printable sight words, that is, lists of high frequency words. We also refer to these as whole words. We have organized the sight words in groups of ten (per page) and a total of sixty sight words per link. (#1-60, 61-120, 121-180 & 181-240). Here is a shortcut…
Sight Words 1 to 60
Download and print these high-frequency sight word flashcards for beginning readers to learn.
This is the first set.
Sight Words 61 - 120
Download and print these high-frequency sight word flashcards for beginning readers to learn.
This is the second set.
Sight Words 121 - 180
Download and print these high-frequency sight word flashcards for beginning readers to learn.
This is the third set.
Sight Words 181 - 240
Download and print these high-frequency sight word flashcards for beginning readers to learn.
This is the fourth set.
The printable lists can be used for flash cards (I don’t call them ‘flash cards’ with children. I prefer something a bit zippier) but the real fun is in finding creating ways to introduce these words and make them ‘instant.’
There are dozens of ways to make learning sight words fun – especially if you have access to colored paper, attractive stickers, cardstock and/or file folders. Adding authentic game pieces (like dice, markers, spinners, and penalties (for example “go back two”) will help to engage your child in the activities. In all likelihood, he or she will be glad to help you create board games, memory games, special tic tac toe squares or bingo cards.
Note, we also have sight word dominoes, practice sentences and special PDFs (i.e. seasonal, vehicles, and activity-related sight words) that include words and pictures.
Sight Word Domino Game Part 1
Download and print Part 1 of our Sight Word Domino game for beginning readers.
This can be used to help new readers to read high-frequency sight words confidently and fluently.
Sight Word Domino Game Part 2
Download and print Part 2 of our Sight Word Domino game for beginning readers.
This can be used to help new readers to read high-frequency sight words confidently and fluently.
Sight Word Domino Game Part 3
Download and print Part 3 of our Sight Word Domino game for beginning readers.
This can be used to help new readers to read high-frequency sight words confidently and fluently.
Important Note: Please limit the number of sight words you introduce at any one time – five or ten at most.
You will be interested in our Sight Word board on Pinterest
