Sight Word Activity 1:
An activity that I introduce once a child has mastered the first three lists of Fry Words is to use a highlighter and highlight all the Fry words found in a passage from those lists. I typically choose a passage that we have already read. When reading a chapter book, I usually just photocopy a page or two to do this activity with. I have found the process of highlighting the Fry Words to be very enlightening both to the child and the parent/teacher. It is amazing to see how many words we read in any text that are ultimately Fry Sight Words! By the time the student has learned all ten lists, it has never failed that the percentage of Fry words is somewhere within the 90%+ range! This is always a wonderful activity to bring to realization the imperativeness of the memorization of the Fry Words. It is so motivational for the child to visualize the purpose of the importance of knowing these words with automaticity.
Below I have some useful suggestions. It might seem like a lot of information, but really.....once you actually do it, it's as easy as 1, 2, 3.
Suggestion 1: This is not an activity that I would overuse. It does take a good bit of time, but the results are worth it.
Suggestion 2: I would work on this as a team. While the child is highlighting one page, the parent/teacher should sit beside him and work on a different page for motivation and support.
Suggestion 3: Print out the first three Fry Words Lists, rather than using flash cards you may have made. Again, I would suggest starting this activity only after the memorization of the first three lists is complete.
Suggestion 4: To make this activity much easier as more and more lists are memorized, I created a document of the particular Fry Lists we are working on, and put the words in alphabetical order. I print the abc order document out, and then we use that abc order of the to help us determine which words are Fry Words or not. (It's much easier to look them up when they are in abc order. None of the Fry Words you print out on line are in abc order.)
Suggestion 5: If you make the abc order list discussed in 'suggestion 4', then here is something else that you can do in order to quickly identify if a particular word from the text is a Fry Word that has been studied. As long as your abc order document is saved on your computer or laptop in Microsoft Word, you can open the document and then use the "control key and the 'f' key" at the same time and then type in the word you are looking for. At this point, the Fry Word will automatically be found in your Fry Word ABC Order document.
Here is a PDF copy of my own ABC order Fry Word List. However, my list contains all 1000 words! You will not want to use my abc list when you have only worked on the first three lists of Fry Words, or the first four lists of Fry Words, etc. This list is one that I continually added to as each new list of 100 Fry Words was mastered by the student I was working with. You might have to make one of your own, and add the words just as I did as each list is mastered.
Click on this image for a real example of a one-page nonfiction passage that I did with a middle school aged student:
You can click this image to see the passage in full screeen; however, you can see here that almost all of the words are highlighted in yellow. Those are all the Fry Words.
FYI: With this activity I also highlight versions of the Fry Words such as inflectional endings that are added, prefixes, and compound words that are made up of two Fry words.