Sight Word Checklist
The first hundred words, in the order children usually meet them.
Free. No account, no email, nothing to install.Families and teachers · K–2
No email address, no account. Print as many as you need, including for a whole class.
For schools and PTOs
Put your school's name on it
Type a school name and it appears on the sheet. Print a class set or a school set — there is nothing to buy and nothing to attribute.
The name you type stays in this browser. It is not sent to us, not saved, and not recorded anywhere — closing the tab is enough to remove it. In the print dialog, choose Save as PDF to keep a copy.
What the sheet asks
- Child’s name
- Date — pass 1, pass 2 and pass 3
- Word
- K — knew it straight away
- S — sounded it out
- N — not yet
How to use it
- Print all four pages and keep them together.
- Read a row aloud with the child and mark K, S or N for each word.
- Come back in a fortnight and fill the next pass in a different colour.
Early in the year, and then again every few weeks — the point of the three passes is that one sheet shows movement over a term rather than a single snapshot. Sit beside the child, read a row aloud together, and mark one box per word. Use a different colour for each pass and the progress is visible without reading a number. Twenty-five words a page is about as much as a five-year-old will do in one sitting, so treat a page as a session.
Questions people ask
- Which hundred words are these?
- Fry’s first 100, in frequency order — the list most US classrooms use, and the one where the earliest words genuinely are the most common. It is named on the sheet so a teacher using Dolch or another list knows before printing.
- Why three passes instead of one tick?
- Because a word known in October and forgotten in January is the thing worth catching, and a single tick cannot show it. Three columns turn the same sheet into a record of what is sticking and what is not.
- May I photocopy this for my whole class?
- Yes. Print, copy and hand out as many as you need, for a class, a year group or a whole school. There is no licence to buy and nothing to attribute.
- What is the difference between K, S and N?
- K is knew it straight away, with no pause. S is sounded it out, which is real progress and not the same as knowing it by sight. N is not yet. The three apart tell you what to practise; a single tick would not.