High-frequency words by grade: which list, how many words, and when

High-frequency words by grade

Which list covers each grade, how many words that adds up to, a few words from each, and the free checklist for that grade. This table was compiled by Readigo, an iOS reading-practice app for children ages 6–12, from Dolch's list, the usual Fry pacing and our own checklists.

*The University of Utah Reading Clinic files Dolch's pre-primer and primer words under 1st grade, by October and by March. Our kindergarten checklist starts them a year earlier. The Fry column follows the 100-a-year rule of thumb. Our checklists merge the Dolch and Fry lists and drop repeats, so their grade lines don't match either list word for word. Ask your child's teacher which list the class uses.

Look up a word

Type a word from a school list or a book. The finder shows its Dolch level, which of our checklists it is on, and whether part of it has to be learned by heart.

High-frequency words, sight words and heart words

High-frequency wordsare the most common words in running text: a, the, of. When a child reads them instantly, reading flows. Some of them can be sounded out with the phonics a child already knows. Others have a part that doesn't follow the usual spelling patterns, like the ai in said.

Heart words are those irregular high-frequency words. The name comes from the tricky part: the child sounds out the rest of the word and learns that one part by heart. On our 1st-grade checklist, 68 of the 100 words can be sounded out and 32 are heart words, so most of the list is phonics practice, not memory work.

Sight words are something else again: any word a child reads instantly, from memory, without sounding it out. A word becomes a sight word after the child has decoded it and met it enough times for the letters and sounds to stick together, a process researchers call orthographic mapping. So high-frequency words are a list, and sight words are a result. More on the difference in sight words vs decodable words.

The Dolch list

Edward Dolch published his list in 1936 and again in his 1948 book Problems in Reading. He took the words that came up most in the children's books of his time and set the nouns aside, on a separate list of 95. The 220that remain are the “service words”: the, was, because, which. Dolch reckoned they made up 50 to 75 percent of the words in schoolbooks.

He split them into five levels: pre-primer (40 words), primer (52), first grade (41), second grade (46) and third grade (41). That grade structure is why the list is still easy to plan with, and also its limit: there is nothing after 3rd grade. Our Dolch vs Fry comparison goes through the differences.

The Fry list

Edward Fry's Instant Words are 1,000 words in order of how often they appear, taught a hundred at a time. The rule of thumb printed with the list in a school handout (cited below) is the first hundred by the end of 1st grade and another hundred each year after that, which puts the first 600 at the end of 6th grade. The same handout says the first 300 make up about two-thirds of the words children meet in their reading.

The first hundred starts with the, of, and, a, to, in, is, you, that, it. The second hundred starts with over, new, sound, take, only, little, work, know, place, years.

The full list is published in Fry's book 1000 Instant Words. Our 4th-grade and 5th-grade checklists draw on its fourth to sixth hundreds.

How many words is enough?

There is no national number. The Common Core kindergarten standard asks children to “read common high-frequency words by sight” and gives ten examples: the, of, to, you, she, my, is, are, do, does. From 1st grade on, the standards ask for “grade-appropriate irregularly spelled words” without a list. So each school picks its own list and pace, and the counts in the table are planning numbers, not a test.

The better check is a book. If your child reads these words inside sentences without stopping, they have them. If reading is still slow and word by word, the WCPM chart by grade shows what is typical for a one-minute read, and the DRA and F&P level converter translates the level on a school report.

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