Words TowerThe Dolch First Grade list41 words
Tap a word to hear it. The voices are AI-generated recordings that ship with the game — nothing is sent anywhere when you play them.
Dolch First Grade — 41 words. Printed from https://vocabularygames.org/sight-word-games/dolch-first-grade/
About this list
By this list the easy words are behind and the awkward spellings begin: «could», «know», «once», «round». They appear constantly in stories, so a child who stumbles on them stumbles on every second line — which is why they are worth more practice than their number suggests.
Each word below is read aloud when you tap it. Where a word has more than one way of being said, the recording uses the one children meet first.
What trips children up here
- «were» and «where» are one letter apart, and «where» was already on the Pre-Primer list.
- «know» starts with a letter nobody says; so does «walk» in the middle.
- «put» does not rhyme with «but», although every rule a child has learned says it should.
- «live» has two pronunciations. The recording says the verb, as in «we live here».
- «could» belongs to a family — could, would, should — that is easier learned together than apart.
How to work through it
Group the words by their trouble, not alphabetically: the silent letters together, the -ould family together.
Ask your child to use a word in a sentence about today. A word in their own sentence is remembered far better than a word on a card.
Keep yesterday’s hard words in tomorrow’s practice until they come without a pause twice in a row.
The same list, as a game
In Words Tower the word is said aloud and your child walks into the door that carries it, on a tower that turns as they climb. Choose 🔤 Learn to read → Dolch First Grade when you pick the words, and the tower is built from this list. A word that was missed comes back sooner; a word that is known comes back rarely. There are no ads, no sign-up and no timers, and progress stays in the browser on your own device.
Play the Dolch First Grade list
Questions
How many sight words should a first grader know?
Schools differ, but by the end of first grade most expect the Pre-Primer, Primer and first grade lists — 133 words — to be recognised without sounding out.
My child reads them one day and forgets them the next.
That is normal and it is what spaced practice is for. A word needs to come back several times over weeks, with gaps between, before it settles. The game schedules those gaps by itself.
Do American and British children use the same list?
The Dolch lists are American, but the words themselves are the commonest words in English and are used just as much elsewhere. The recordings here are in an American accent.
Do we have to pay for anything?
No. The lists, the recordings and the game are free, there are no ads and no sign-up, and progress stays in the browser on your own device.
Can I print this list?
Yes. Print the page and you get the list on paper, without the buttons and without the rest of the site — one sheet to put on the fridge or hand out in class.
The other lists
Before this: Dolch Primer. Next: Dolch Second Grade. All of them on the sight word games page.