Dear Parents,
We will be working on having the students master the Dolch Words. These high-frequency words are a crucial part of successful reading, as these words are used most often in print.
Attached you will find flashcards of these words, labeled pre-primer, primer, and first grade. Once your child has mastered a list, you can move on to the next one. You will know your child has mastered a word when they can recognize and read it fluently, without hesitation. Our Fundations/phonics program refers to these words and other high-frequency words as “trick words.” If your child can read all of the words, you can challenge them to work on spelling these words.
Some of these words can be sounded out such as the following: big, red, must. While others are words that don't follow a typical spelling pattern such as the following words: said, what, where. When learning these words, the teacher highlights the trickier parts that must be learned “by heart.” For example, in the word “said,” students can hear the /s/ and /d/, but need to learn that /ai/ makes the /e/ sound. The following is a great website that has HEART WORD MAGIC videos utilizing the same routine we use to learn trick words in class:
https://www.reallygreatreading.com/