Victoria Bielomaz

3/10/16
Dolch Sight Words Reading Assessment
I am working with a 4th grade student named GC. He is ten years old. Getting to know
GC has been quite the treat and assessing him has revealed much about his reading abilities. I am
more confident than ever on how I can aid him to become a better reader. Through the CORE
phonics, I have determined where he needs explicit instruction with phonics skills (in fact, minilessons and word sorts have already been implemented in a small group setting!). With the San
Diego Quick, I have discovered he is at a Grade 1 independent and instructional level. This has
aided me in the choice of my materials for the group as well. One aspect I noticed when
assessing GC with the San Diego Quick was that GCs errors were read as real words rather than
mispronunciation. To illustrate, GC read early instead of earth. They look very similar as
they both begin with ear-. Consequently, I decided to assess GC on his sight words. To do this
I used the Dolch Sight Words Reading Assessment.
Dolch sight words are the most common words and nouns encountered in childrens
books, (K12 Reader, 2015, p.1). These words are important to know because they are highfrequency words and are difficult to sound out or illustrate, (K12 Reader, 2015, p.1). By
knowing these sight words, students will have access up to 75% of what is printed in almost any
piece of childrens literature, (K12 Reader, 2015, p.1). So, if a student can identify these words,
they are more likely to be fluent readers. A teacher can use this assessment to determine which
words they know and which words they still need to learn. Then, teachers can then use a variety
of strategies to teach the sight words they are lacking (K12 Reader, 2015).

To administer this assessment, the students will have their list of sight words in front of
them in the form of the Dolch Word List (Hodge, 2009). The teacher will also have a copy of the
list (Hodge, 2009). She will note on her form the words the student says incorrectly (Hodge,
2009). The assessment can be used as a way to collect data over multiple administrations of the
assessment (Hodge, 2009).
Since GC is a 4th grader, I decided to give GC the list of one level below. On the 3rd grade
list, there are 41 words. He read all of the words correct except for carry, done, own, and
six. I was surprised he did so well, seeing as his independent level of reading is grade one. At
this point I realized that further assessment would benefit him, I decided to start back at the Preprimer list and do all of the lists (as well as the nouns list). I realized I was mistaken to only
choose one list. On the Pre-primer list he missed: go, little, and three. On Primer list he
missed: came, pretty, and ran. Then on First list he missed: ask, going, had, may,
once, take, think, and were. This is where he began to miss more words. This is
interesting seeing as first grade is his independent reading level. On Second list he missed:
always, call, dont, gave, gave, its, many, off, pull, sit, these, those,
us, wash, and your. The second grade list was where he struggled the most. As previously
mentioned GC scored well in the 3rd grade list missing only 4/41. Finally, in the noun list he
missed: day, chair, farmer, father, ground, hand, kitty, song, stick, street,
and wind.
I found it interesting that GC did better on the Third list than the Second list. Overall, GC
knew the majority of the words and it should not be too long now before he learns the ones he is
missing. I think that this assessment was insightful and I feel that using the sight word
assessment was easy and informative. It took no more than 5 minutes for GC to take the

assessment. Now that I know the words he is missing I can go back and use different strategies to
teach them. The K12 Reading website had many ideas on how to teach (ex. Flash cards, search
puzzles, cloze passages, word shape activities, etc.).

Resources
Dolch, E.W. (1948). Dolch Word List: Sorted alphabetically by grade level. Retrieved from
http://www.oasisnet.org/Portals/0/Cities/Tuscon/Dolch%20Words%20with
%20Nouns.pdf
Hodge, L. (2009) Dolch Sight Word Assessment. Retrieved from
http://education.wm.edu/centers/ttac/documents/webinars/languageinstructionsupportdoc
s/Lesson%209/dolcgsightwordassessment.pdf
K12 Reader (2015). Dolch Word List Worksheets and Activities. Retrieved from
http://www.k12reader.com/dolch-word-list/
K12 Reader (2015). Teaching Sight Words: Effective strategies for reading success. Retrieved
from http://www.k12reader.com/sight-word-teaching-strategies/