The First 100 Sight Words

The Dolch Sight Word List, Fry Word List, and Oxford Word List are the most frequently cited high-frequency word lists used in early reading instruction. All three identify words that occur most often in children’s texts, but they differ in origin, construction, and how they are interpreted instructionally.

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Origins and Purpose
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The Dolch list was compiled from children’s reading materials in the 1930s and was intended to identify words that appear most frequently in early texts. Selection was based on frequency and classroom utility, not on phoneme–grapheme analysis or instructional sequencing.

The Fry list was developed using large corpora of written English and ranks words strictly by frequency of occurrence. It does not provide guidance on phoneme identification, grapheme selection, or instructional order.

The Oxford Word List, commonly used in the UK, draws on contemporary British English corpora and aligns with vocabulary found in early reading schemes. It reflects current language use rather than a prescribed instructional sequence.

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Linguistic Characteristics of the First 100 Words

Across all three lists, the first 100 words are dominated by:

• Function words required for sentence construction, including articles, prepositions, pronouns, auxiliaries, and high-frequency verbs

• Words that occur repeatedly due to their grammatical role rather than semantic content

Frequency in these lists reflects how often words are required to construct English sentences, not their spelling regularity or instructional simplicity.

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Phoneme–Grapheme Considerations

Many words in the first 100 contain phoneme–grapheme correspondences that fall outside the scope of those explicitly taught early in systematic synthetic phonics programmes. These words are often labelled “irregular” in classroom practice, despite being fully decodable when all phonemes are identified and mapped to their corresponding graphemes. The instructional challenge lies not in decodability, but in the presence of untaught or less common correspondences. They are only 'tricky' as not included in the programme. 

Instructional Use in Schools

In practice, these lists are rarely taught as standalone resources. Instead, they influence:

• Programme-specific high-frequency or “common exception” word lists

• Reading scheme text design

• Classroom resources such as flashcards and word walls

While national policy states that all words are to be decoded, teachers are often required to make phoneme–grapheme mapping decisions without explicit guidance when words extend beyond taught correspondences.

Key Point

The Dolch, Fry, and Oxford first 100 word lists identify broadly the same core set of high-utility words. Differences in classroom outcomes arise not from the lists themselves, but from how phoneme–grapheme correspondences within these words are identified, taught, or left implicit when they fall outside programme content.