Can someone PLEASE tell me how many high frequency words there are??????

[propercheesed]

DS is currently KS1 at school, I have requested a copy of any high frequency words he should be learning(along side his reading) but surprise surprise access denied!!. Anyone would think I wanted to help my son .

I have googled and googled and I keep getting different answers, please could any teachers or up to speed parents tell me where to find the answer?

To go back to propercheesed's dilemma....

If it's on his IEP, then that's easily resolvable. Ask the SENCo for a copy of the actual words (s)he wants him to be able to read/recognise. (S)he will be delighted that you are wanting to support him

or ask why she is suggesting he learns words by sight instead of learning to read them

Mathanxiety said "True enough that there are very few words that completely defy decoding."
There are not even a few words that defy decoding. There are NO words that defy decoding- no exceptions. In the most difficult examples, such as 'yacht', for example, although we might have differing opinions about how to code the word, there are only three sounds, 'y' 'o' 't'. So, do we code it , or would we prefer . My preferred option is the second because the only odd spelling is the . [ is commonly used to encode the sound 'o' in lots of words.] In addition, if you ask a class to analyse the word in this way, always presuming that they've already done lots of phonics(!), they'll be much more likely to remember how to spell it.
"But how much time do you want to spend going through the variations and helping children decide which to use?"
You teach it systematically, throughout all of YR, Y1 and Y2, by which time they'll be demon readers and spellers. That isn't the only thing you'll do in those years, of course. Not by a long chalk! But, what you'll have is children who can read anything. :)

''You teach it systematically, throughout all of YR, Y1 and Y2, by which time they'll be demon readers and spellers''

And here's the evidence:

S~W's impressive longitudinal study of literacy development from 2003-2009, following 1607 pupils through Key Stage 1:
www.sounds-write.co.uk/documents/sounds_write_research_report_2009.pdf

The point of teaching the hf word is to arrive at automaticity, same as Dolch and all the other lists (and again, there is a high degree of overlap among all the lists). There will come a point when a student recognises the majority of words they come across without decoding. That is the aim of every method. In practice, Dolch lists/whole words/hf words/Fry words - whatever else you care to call them - are taught in combination with phonics.

There are no invariable rules in English; many of the exceptions have exceptions themselves, and much of the logic required to become a fluent reader is beyond the capacity of the average 4-6 year old. The decoding of many words on sight reading lists (or whatever else you want to call them) is often difficult using implicit phonic decoding because it involves many of the exceptions to the basic rules (and sometimes the exceptions to the exceptions). Since they are high frequency words it is important to master them early. This is where sight reading comes in.

'Sight words' are not synonymous with 'whole language' methods.

Of course the point of teaching a child to read is to reach aromaticity but that doesn't require a child learning Dolch word lists

stupid predictive text! automaticity

They have to first decide what sound the vowel makes in yacht. The CHT bit is not the only stumbling block. And yacht is not a word they are likely to run into much.

You do realise the Sounds-Write is a company flogging a product, Maverick? At what point does an impressive study of one method by its developer/promoter become an advertisement?

math - can you see the adverts in your post? the underlined words?? or is it just me?

Look at the Dolch word list and tell me which of those words is beyond the average 5-6 year old child?

One question, have things changed greatly in last 5-8 years?
Because both my DDs started doing phonics, but by the time they got to Th and simple blends they could already read almost perfectly DD2 or the rest of the class had streaked ahead of them DD1 and learning sight words was pretty much all that was left.
Complex phonic blends were never explicitly taught, except possibly in spelling lists. Certainly they were never taught such that DD1 was able to apply them.

DD2 doesn't need deliberately teaching spelling rules she was, pretty much, born knowing them

''If, for example, we only use about 15,000 words (we actually use about
50,000 words in conversational English), why then didn't SOMEONE in the
entire history of developing a writing system use the whole word as a
unit for the writing system? Many early writing systems started out
that way, and they had to scrap this idea. The fact is that NO writing
system ever exceeded 2000 symbols. This is because that is the absolute
limit (lifetime learning limit) of a human's ability remember which
abstract symbol (or sequence of symbols) stands for which word. Think
about how hard even this would be! It takes Japanese children from
first form to the end of secondary school to memorize 1850 Kanji symbols
and which word they go with. The bulk of their writing system is
written with sound symbols, not word symbols. The beauty of using
sounds (syllables, diphones, phonemes)is that this drastically reduces
the memory load. It is simply impossible to do what he claims. If it
was possible then everyone would learn to read effortlessly, and the
English spelling code would be a piece of cake. It is not.

Furthermore, one should never think that just because "it seems like" we
read instantly, this is, in fact, what we do. Our brain processes
millions of bits of information all the time that we are not consciously
aware of, because the processing speed far outsrips our ability to be
conscious of it. An efficient reader has "automatized" or "speeded up"
the decoding process to the point where it runs off outside conscious
awareness''

Diane McGuinness. Early Reading Instruction.

Things have changed in many schools who taught in the way you describe, others have always taught all the ways the sounds found in English can be represented.

"You do realise the Sounds-Write is a company flogging a product, Maverick? At what point does an impressive study of one method by its developer/promoter become an advertisement?"
The reason why I use the pen name SoundsWrite, Math, is in the interests of transparency. I would like to point out that never once have I ever tried to 'flog', as you put it, anything to anyone nor to direct anyone towards anything to do with the company.
And, by the way, we spent eight years collecting the data Maverick referred to from teachers teaching in schools, which information we have made freely available.

The words can be learned by the average 5-6 year old, but the decoding requires following logic. It is the logic that is the issue. In phonetic decoding of words where not every grapheme has the same sound from word to word, children are asked to think of the same item in more than one way ('tough', 'bough'/'brow', 'grow'), sometimes in the same word ('civic', for instance), and use logical sequences such as 'and' 'or' 'not' 'if' ---> then.

From the Dolch list, a few pop out at me :
good (food, blood)
here (there)
I (in, is, it)
pretty (gritty)
to (top, toe)
You (young)
Work (lurk)
Said (bed)
Again (gain)
Five/Live (live, alive)
Four (our, your)
Open (orange, top)
and there are more.

At what point does teaching a rule that covers only a few words become explicit teaching of those words?

(Puffins, apologies, but I'm not sure what you're referring to there.)

SoundsWrite, your company is still in the business of selling a product, for money, to schools. Whether you call it flogging or selling it is still the same process.

Well there are roughly 180 ways of representing the 44ish sounds found in English to learn so that's 40 fewer than the 220 Dolch words and at when you've learnt the graphemes you can read any word in English whereas with Dolch you can still only read 220 words you've memorised.

Do you so readily dismiss all research carried out by companies mathanxiety?

I should point out that I have no financial connection whatsoever with Sounds-Write. Futhermore, I do think their empirical research is impressive.

I don't see what S-W being 'a business' has got to do with whether it's a good idea to teach 'sight words' or not. Perhaps it's a ploy to change the subject by someone who has lost the arguement?

sorry -that should be argument

When the research is only on their own product and the results reveal that the product is wonderful I am a bit , yes.

Again, the 220 Dolch words represent up to 75% of the words a student will run into in the course of reading.

And I think it is closer to 250 ways to represent those 41-44 phonemes, though some researchers have come up with a figure of over 1,100..

Since sight words are being dismissed by people claiming that phonics is a superior method, then research supporting phonics that turns out to be an extended advert for one particular phonics method is hardly evidence that phonics is superior to sight word teaching....

So you wouldn't want a cancer treatment that has been proven to work if the research was paid for by the big pharmaceutical company producing it?

You must read pretty boring texts if only 25% of their content isn't on the Dolch list and they only go to 3rd grade