Fry Sight Words in Frequency Order

Elementary Kindergarten Preschool Language ArtsPrintables

Fry sight words are, by far, our favorite when it comes to teaching sight words.

But there are many different schools of thought when it comes to teaching sight words.

Some teachers prefer the simplicity of smaller lists, others create their own to focus on a select few high-frequency words, and then there are those like myself that love the Fry sight words list and all that it has to offer.

And with these printable Fry sight words lists, we’ve taken that awesomeness and organized it all by frequency order!

Fry vs. Dolch: What’s the Difference?

While I’m sure that you could find a million different sight word lists on the internet today that have compiled several different high-frequency words, the Fry and Dolch lists are probably the most well-known and the most commonly used.

Deciding to use one over the other is more often than not a matter of personal preference.

Now, I’ve written about the Dolch lists before and you can more about those here, but personally, I prefer to teach the Fry lists as I feel that they are more comprehensive and have been updated more recently than the Dolch lists.

What do I mean by that?

Well, the Dolch list was first compiled and published in 1936 and hasn’t really been updated since.

The Fry sight words, on the other hand, were first compiled by Dr. Edward Fry in 1957 and then updated again in 1980.

And while the main Dolch lists consist of just 220 words, the Fry sight words list is comprised of 1,000 of the most commonly found words in print, and students that master all 1,000 words will know roughly 90% of the words that they come across in their daily reading and writing.

Fry Sight Words

As I pointed out above, the Fry sight words are made up of 1,000 common words, nouns included, and these words are broken up into ten different groups or lists.

• Fry 1st 100
• Fry 2nd 100
• Fry 3rd 100
• Fry 4th 100
• Fry 5th 100
• Fry 6th 100
• Fry 7th 100
• Fry 8th 100
• Fry 9th 100
• Fry 10th 100

Just like the words on the Dolch lists, some of these are regular, or decodable words, and some are irregular, or non-decodable, words as well as being high-frequency words that children will encounter often while reading and writing.

So, while there are many more words on the Fry lists and it will obviously take longer for students to master them all, doing so will dramatically increase their fluency and comprehension.

Teaching Fry Sight Words

These printable lists not only include all 1,000 words broken up into the 10 Fry lists but they’re all also organized by frequency order, meaning that the words found at the beginning of each list are the ones that your students will come across most frequently.

That automatically gives you the perfect place to start as far as teaching them!

And these words, just like any other set of sight words, are best taught through practice.

You will, however, find a lot more success, for both you and your students, if you can find ways to get them excited about it and make that practice fun.

Things like reading books and playing games are fantastic ways to do this and allow each of your students to learn these words at their own pace and in their own time.