Words TowerThe Fry words 1–100 list100 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.
Fry words 1–100 — 100 words. Printed from https://vocabularygames.org/sight-word-games/fry-words-1-100/
About this list
Edward Fry ranked the thousand commonest words in English by how often they actually appear in print. The first hundred are the ones that repay practice most: a child who knows them reads about half the words on any page without thinking, and can spend their attention on the other half.
The Fry and Dolch lists overlap heavily — if your child has worked through Dolch Pre-Primer and Primer, most of this list will already be familiar. Tap a word to hear it, and use the list to find the few that are not.
What trips children up here
- «of» is the odd one out: it is said with a v, and it is the second commonest word in English.
- «the», «they», «them», «then», «there» and «their» are six of the hundred and all begin the same way.
- «was», «were» and «what» are irregular and frequent — a bad combination, and worth extra rounds.
- «one» and «two» cannot be worked out from their letters at all.
- «its» and «it’s» both appear; only the apostrophe tells them apart, and it changes the meaning entirely.
How to work through it
Use the list to find gaps rather than to teach from the top: play each word, and keep only the ones your child hesitates on.
Ten words a session is plenty, and the session can be three minutes long.
Read something real afterwards. These words were chosen because they are everywhere, so the practice pays off immediately.
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 → Fry words 1–100 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.
Questions
What is the difference between Fry words and Dolch words?
Dolch grouped words by school level in 1936; Fry ranked them by frequency in 1980 and went up to a thousand. The lists overlap a great deal — Fry is simply the larger and newer of the two.
Do the first 100 Fry words really make up half of what we read?
About half, in ordinary English text, which is why they are called instant words: they should be read instantly, without decoding.
Should we do Fry or Dolch?
Either. Schools in the United States use both. If your school names one, follow it; if not, the Dolch graded lists are the gentler starting point and the Fry lists the better continuation.
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 nouns. Next: Fry words 101–200. All of them on the sight word games page.