*100 Words for Beginning Readers*

6-27-02
By Stryder

Not too long ago a survey was done of 1000 pre-primer, early reader and first reader books. The 100 most frequent words in those books were recorded and tabulated into what home schoolers usually call the "Word Wall Words." Why are these words important? Because they are the basic foundation of a beginning reading program. Starting young pre-readers out learning these words as a part of the reading program is an excellent beginning. Even parents who do not plan to home school (and we have a lot of new parents on the Rubicon and on our teams now!) can get their kids WAY ahead by teaching the Word Wall Words before school. Why?

Because:

• They are used over and over in the books that you will be reading to your child and knowing them will help to make the connection to decoding reading.
• Knowing just this list of 100 words will allow your child to be a reader of many pre-primer and early reader books. Not just memorizing and repeating the book (which is also important in reading development!) but actually reading.
• Knowing these words will help a young developing reader to start writing as well because they will have a few words to use to make simple sentences or ‘books’ with.
• Many of these words have parts that can be used to make other words. (chunking)
• Some of these words must be learned "at sight" because they do not follow the standards of pronunciation and spelling.

Here are some ways that your child can practice the words.

A Word Wall. They’re not called Word Wall Words for no reason. Make a poster of the words 5, 10, or 25 words at a time and put them on the wall. Put them in your child’s room or the living room, or the kitchen, or anywhere.

Flash Cards. Put the words on homemade "flashcards" and then practice showing the words while having the child say them. Kids will memorize and learn the words by sight quickly. Remember to keep it a game and not a chore and they will learn them so fast that you’ll be amazed.

Games. Think up games to play with the words. One we used to play was to sort the words (written on pieces of paper) into piles based on the number of letters they had. All of the words are between one and five letters so even pre-readers can count the number of letters in the word and sort them into piles of words with 1,2,3,4, or 5 letters. Just playing with the written words gets them used to seeing the words and the letters they are made of.

Build Words. Build new words with a word. Start with the word "in" for example. Add a W to get Win, a T to get Tin, an F to get Fin, etc.

Write. Write the words. Once your child can shape the letters start writing the words.

Trace. Pour some rice into a box or onto a cookie sheet and let your child write the words by tracing the word with a finger in the rice, or flour, cereal, or whatever.

Build Sentences. Once your child has learned a few words make it a part of the learning to build simple sentences. She is big. You said it. Dad will go. You will find many examples of simple three and four word sentences when you get started.

So … What are these words you ask? Here they are:

Teaching a child to read is VERY special. Parents who don’t home school don’t always get a chance, or make a chance, to do it. But watching your own child figure out that the marks they see around them stand for sounds and that they make up words and that those words are language and language tells a story – WOW! Nothing can beat it. So teach your children to read then: