If you need ideas and resources for teaching 3rd grade high frequency words, then you are in luck. This site has several tips and resources to help you out.

High Frequency Words

The Dolch sight vocabulary words are the 220 most frequently used words in book from school and libraries, newspapers, and magazines. These words need to be memorized and become words that the children know by sight. The Dolch words are covered from preschool through the third grade.

Here are the words that need to be included when teaching 3rd grade high frequency words: about, better, bring, carry, clean, cut, done, draw, drink, eight, fall, far, full, got, grow, hold, hot, hurt, if, keep, kind, laugh, light, long, much, myself, never, only, own, pick, seven, shall, show, six, small, start, ten, today, together, try, warm

Teaching 3rd Grade High Frequency Words

There are many ways of teaching 3rd grade high frequency words. Other than drilling, which is great for a short time, you can play all kinds of word games.

If it is wintertime, you can play Melting Snowman. This is the opposite of Hangman; as you draw two snowmen with the same number of parts, from 10-14. Each team member that gets a word right gets to erase one part of the opposing team’s snowman. If it is not winter time, you could draw other things, like animals, flowers, or trees. 

Worksheets and puzzles are also a way to teach high frequency words. Even a simple alphabetizing worksheet with the Dolch sight words would expose the students to the words more. One kind of puzzle that the students really enjoy is a word search. There are sites online where you can make your own to print out and use. Two of them are Word Search Fun and Puzzlemaker.

Online Games

At Dolch World there are three memory games and a matching game. In the spelling game, you have to spell the word before the time runs out, and in the jigword game, you click on the speaker to hear the word, then click the word and drag it to the blank by the speaker.

Gamequarium has several types of word games. They are:

• Star Words - This game works on learning the configuration (outline) of the word.
• Make a Match - A concentration game which sounds the word after a match is made.
• Color Word Memory Game - This covers all the color words.
• Gisele's Pick and Click - This has various word games.
• Spellbound - This game shows a word for a few seconds and after it is gone, the player clicks and drags the letters to spell it.

Another site is MRCPL.org: In all the games, the word is sounded when the mouse rolls over it. There are matching games and stories with the sight words highlighted. One game, Frig Magnet Poetry is particularly creative, as it has the player making poems, sentences, and stories.

Netrover is good and has some games for two players:   Types of games are: Listen and Spell, Listen and Match, and Jigsaw. Check out the Dolch Games 1, 2, and 3 and also the Learn Sight Words by Categories.