Sight Words

What are sight words?

Sight words are words like come, does, or
who, that don’t follow the rules of spelling.

These words have to be memorized because decoding them is really difficult. Students are taught to memorize sight words as a whole, by sight, so that they can recognize them immediately (within three seconds) and read them without having to use decoding skills.

Put simply, sight words are words that we teach our young readers to know by heart. That way, they don’t have to spend valuable time decoding them.