Phonics vs Sight Words: What’s the Difference, and Which Comes First?

Phonics teaches that letters and groups of letters stand for sounds, and that you can blend those sounds to read a word. A child who knows the sounds for c, a and t can read cat even if they’ve never seen it before. Our guide on how to teach phonics at home covers the whole sequence.

The strength of phonics is that it’s generative: each new sound a child learns opens up many new words. The 26 letters and the common letter pairs are enough to read most of the words children meet.

The term “sight words” causes confusion because people use it in two ways.

1. Words read instantly. For skilled readers, almost every familiar word is a sight word: we recognize it in a flash, without sounding it out. Children build this bank of instant words by decoding a word successfully several times, until it’s stored in memory. Phonics is how words become sight words.
2. A list of common words to memorize. Many schools send home lists of high-frequency words, such as the, and, was, said, you, they, to learn “by sight”. Some lists contain hundreds of words.

The first meaning is the goal of all reading. The second is where the debate lies.

Some approaches to reading used to rely heavily on children memorizing the shape of whole words, often from flashcards, and guessing unfamiliar words from pictures or context. The problem is that memory for word shapes runs out. Lots of words look similar: house and horse, was and saw, then and them. A child relying on shape alone will struggle as soon as the books get harder.

Guessing from pictures causes a similar problem. It works in early books with one word and one picture per page, and then fails in books where the pictures don’t tell the whole story.

Phonics gives children a reliable way to work out any new word. That’s why it’s the backbone of early reading teaching in many countries.

Some very common words can’t be sounded out with the phonics a beginner knows yet. The is in almost every sentence, and a child just learning s, a, t, p, i, n can’t decode it. So it makes sense to teach a handful of these words directly, so children can read simple sentences early.

These are often called tricky words or heart words (because part of them has to be learned “by heart”). They differ from a big sight-word list in two ways:

• There are only a few at a time. A beginner might learn five or six, not fifty.
• You still use phonics. Most tricky words are only tricky in one place. In said, the /s/ and /d/ are regular; only the ai is unusual. Point out the regular parts and the tricky part separately.

Also, many words on sight-word lists aren’t tricky at all. And, it, can, get, up, big are fully decodable once a child knows the letter sounds. Those don’t need to be memorized: teach them through phonics.

1. Say the word and use it in a sentence. “Was. The cat was on the mat.”
2. Say the sounds. /w/ /o/ /z/.
3. Match sounds to letters. Point to each letter as you say its sound. “The w is regular. The a is saying /o/, which is tricky. And the s is saying /z/.”
4. Mark the tricky bit. Put a small heart above the tricky letters.
5. Write it. Your child writes the word, saying the sounds.
6. Find it. Look for the word in a book or on a page.

Teach two or three tricky words a week, and keep reviewing them. Our list of tricky words for kindergarten gives a starting set.

If your child comes home with a sight-word list, don’t panic and don’t fight it. Sort the list into two piles:

• Decodable now: words your child can sound out with the sounds they know. Practice these by blending.
• Tricky for now: words with a part your child can’t decode yet. Teach these with the steps above.

Over time, more words move from the tricky pile to the decodable pile as your child learns more sounds. Day is tricky until your child learns ay; after that it’s regular.

If your child’s teacher uses a particular method, follow it at home too, and feel free to ask how they teach tricky words. Children do best when home and school say the same thing.

Lead with phonics. Add a small set of tricky words alongside it, a few at a time, using phonics for the regular parts. Read aloud to your child every day for vocabulary and enjoyment. If you have concerns about your child’s reading, talk to their teacher.

In practice, a home week might include four or five short phonics sessions on letter sounds and blending, two or three new tricky words taught with the heart method, and a daily read-aloud. The tricky-word part takes a couple of minutes a day. The phonics and the reading aloud do the rest.