50 Must-Know Sight Words

What are Sight Words?

Sight words are commonly used words that young students should instantly recognize without sounding them out. They are high-frequency words that appear very often in print. Because these common words have irregular spellings, students need to memorize them through repetition.

Why are they Important?

Sight words are the key for reading! Because instant recognition of frequently occurring words improves reading speed, accuracy, fluency and comprehension.

Learning to Read Step-by-Step

As beginning readers progress through the early elementary grades, they will encounter words with increasing complexity.

Kindergarten Sight Words:

The focus is on 40 basic words like – the, to, you, she, my, is, are. Quickly recognizing basic sight words gives an emergent reader confidence to read fun phrases like “The cat is big” or “I can hop”. Knowing these foundation words gives emergent readers confidence to enjoy easy books and stories.

Here are sight words into leveled groups for each grade, starting from basic sight words, building into more complex vocabulary

Kindergarten Sight Words: a, am, and, away, big, blue, can, come, down, find, for, funny, go, help, here, I, in, is, it, jump, little, look, make, me, my, not, one, play, red, run, said, see, the, three, to, two, up, we, where, yellow, you

First Grade Sight Words:
all, are, at, ate, be, black, brown, but, came, did, do, eat, four, get, good, have, he, into, like, must, new, no, now, on, our, out, please, pretty, ran, ride, saw, say, she, so, soon, that, there, they, this, too, under, want, was, well, went, what, white, who, will, with, yes

Second Grade Sight Words: always, around, became, because, been, before, best, both, buy, call, cold, does, don’t, fast, first, five, found, gave, goes, green, its, made, many, off, or, pull, read, right, sing, sit, sleep, tell, their, these, those, upon, us, use, very, wash, which, why, wish, work, would, write, your

Activities for Sight Word Practice

To achieve mastery of words, students need consistent practice through fun activities like:

• Flashcards
• Games
• Songs and movement
• Tracing and writing
• Reading books
• Digital games and apps
• Worksheets

Click here for free Sight Words Worksheets from Workbooks Digital Library!