Description
Big Word Games is contains both a PC and Mac version.
This disc re-introduces the High Frequency Word Lists through a series of exciting electronic games and teaching activities. It excites children of all ages and thus makes the ‘re-cycling’ of this learning fun and engaging. In addition to the Dolch High Frequency Word Lists, this disc includes ‘WOW’ word lists to complement work in ‘Big Writing’. It should be remembered that, having met new ‘WOW’ words, children should be constantly making up sentences that include them to embed their meaning and correct usage.
In playing all the games, children should always say out loud and spell each word as it is used in a game.
The Dolch Word List is a list of frequently used words compiled by Edward William Dolch, PhD. The list was prepared in 1936. The list was originally published in his book Problems in Reading in 1948. Under the copyright laws in effect during the time of publication, the Dolch word list is out of copyright.
Dolch compiled the list based on children’s books of his era. The list contains 220 “service words” that have to be easily recognized in order to achieve reading fluency in the English language. The compilation excludes nouns, which comprise a separate 95-word list.
Many of the 220 Dolch words can’t be “sounded out” using common sound-to-letter implicit phonics patterns and have to be learned by sight; hence the alternative term, “sight word.”
The teaching of the High Frequency Word Lists has been a requirement of the National Curriculum since 1988. The original lists have been used in primary schools throughout my teaching career and are known as the Dolch lists. They contain the words most frequently met in reading and needed in writing, and clearly it is crucial that children should learn them. However, the teaching of these words by standard sight methods is a traditional approach that can be sedentary and alien to many young children in today’s world of electronics and the internet. In addition, the recommended practice of teaching the first list to 4 and 5 year olds, the second to five / six year olds and the third to six / seven year olds, means that many children who are developing a little more slowly, miss much of this crucial work.
Nb: The National Strategies introduced replacement lists in the late 1990s. Examination of those lists indicated, however, that there were many words on them that were not, in fact, frequently used by all individuals. It is for this reason that Andrell Education have continued to recommend the use of the Dolch Lists. Ros. Wilson March 2012
This software includes a PC and Mac version.
