Dolsch Word List or Red Words?

Really, as long as you teach mostly high-frequency words early on, and save the rare words for later, the exact order is of little importance. I mean, you *are* going to teach and, here, is, the, like, in, a, tree, ball, dog, come, … no matter which list you use (these are the first words in roughly the order that my favourite series presents them.) Find a program you like and go for it.

BTW, I use phonics to work even on these less-regular words. I find it makes a lot more sense both to me and my student if we use one consistent approach, not two different ways to read and you have to guess which rules apply. Even if some of the vowels are irregular, all of those words have enough consonant clues that you can get them right with sentence context.

There’s quite a bit of difference. Dolch words are selected as high frequency vocabulary. Many of the words are completely decodable (ie can, he, she, think, etc. etc.). The OG red words are not very decodable, perhaps with one or two differences from expected spelling. In some OG systems the person is taught to decode the rest of the word and to find the part that “doesn’t play by the rules”. I agree with this approach.This is quite different than having a child memorize the form of hundreds of words.

If, however, you took out the decodable Dolch words (you won’t have many left!!), and used them in the way that OG uses them, then I don’t see a problem. If you want guidance as to which words to teach this way, I would use the red words vs. Dolch as they are bound to be less decodable.

I agree with Victoria on the order of teaching as well. OG generally does not initially teach the Red words (or whatever term the particular OG system uses). They are only used after the child learns to decode to a certain extent and is provided with highly decodable reading material, and knows to expect to decode. She and I might disagree with *how much* is not entirely decodable (in fact there are many disagreements on that question), but the point is that you teach the kid to decode first.
You would graduallly introduce the highly frequent less decodable words when you really need them, but not at all before. And it is advantageous
to teach the child to decode the rest of the word. After all, the rest of the word may provide 90% of the clues as to what the word is, vs having the child memorize 100% of it.

—des

>What do you think is most beneficial to the students teaching them the Dolsch Words or Orton Gillingham Red Words? What is the difference between the two word lists? :? This is all in conjunction with phonics of course.

Thank you,
Caron[/quote]