Pre-Teaching High Frequency Sight Words and the Effects on Students’ Reading Accuracy

Abstract

Primary teachers across the United States of America spend a portion of their instruction time teaching their students high frequency sight words. In order for students to become successful readers, they must first have a vocabulary of words that are recognized automatically by sight. Students who do not have a “sight word” vocabulary will spend valuable reading time sounding out words when their primary focus needs to be on comprehension of the text. However, there are a multitude of games, activities, lessons, and strategies in which to teach high frequency words. This paper will explore some of the ways to teach high frequency words as well as which ways are the most efficient.