Puzzle Words

From Montessori Album
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Please, do not use Dolch Sight Words, Fry's 100 Instant Words, or any collection of "sight words" to be memorized. Doing this is no different than using the long discredited "whole-word" method of teaching reading. The great majority of these "sight-words" can be spelled phonetically. Even those that are a little trickier do have phonetic rules that they follow, or at least most of the word can be sounded out. Teaching sight words before children have a solid phonetic foundation gives them the idea that some or all words just have to be memorized. This will cause them more problems in the long run.
That being said, there are a few high frequency words with odd spellings that are worth pointing out to the children. Notice that even though the words below have irregular spellings, they are still largely phonetic. Do not tell the children that these words "can't be sounded out and must be memorized." Have the child sound the words out as much as possible and just point out the unusual vowels.


a, are, have, people, Mr., Mrs., of, one (& once), straight, the, two, was