Notes to my book – Teach your child to Read - Part 1

 

Dolch (High Frequency) words

My upcoming book teaches phonics along with 8 (Dolch words) called sight words to be memorised in each lesson.

The Dolch words comprise about 50 to 70 percent of the words in most books. These are High-Frequency words such as on, the, with, here, to, no, at, etc.

In order to achieve reading fluency it is best to get your student to memorise these words by rote memory.

Once a child knows this list of words, it makes reading much easier because the child can then focus his attention on the remaining words.

Although most of the 220 Dolch words are phonetic, it is best that the children memorise these words. For those who say that memorisation is not easy, think of the Chinese school children who have to memorise about 600 Chinese characters per year for each of the 6 years in primary school.

How to memorise high-frequency words

Memorise the words by rote memory. Spell the letters of the word and say the word. For example, to memorise the word with; say w-i-t-h and then recite the word with. Repeat it 5 times before moving on to the next word. List down the words that the child is unable to memorise and continue the process until all the Dolch words can be remembered.

Memorising these words will then get him to write at least 50% of the words correctly when he writes an essay.