My Child Can't Remember Sight Words

Forgetting a sight word your child could read last week is normal. A new word needs many short encounters, spread over weeks, before it stays, and some children need far more of them than others. On its own, forgetting is not a sign that anything is wrong.

When words keep slipping, the usual reasons are about the practice rather than your child: too many new words at once, old words that stop coming back, or words being memorized that could have been sounded out.

The most useful single change is to keep the pile small and review the old words every day before adding a new one. Two or three new words a week is plenty, and a word that is still shaky stays in the pile until it isn’t.

Why does my child keep forgetting sight words?

A sight word stays in memory when your child connects its letters to its sounds. Reading researcher Linnea Ehri calls this orthographic mapping. In her 2014 paper in Scientific Studies of Reading she describes those connections as what “serve to ‘glue’ spellings to their pronunciation in memory,” and writes that once they form, “Rereading them a few times moves the words into memory so they can be read by sight.”

A word learned as a picture, a shape your child knows without looking at its letters, has nothing holding it. Shapes are easy to lose and easy to mix up.

That holds even for heart words, the common words with a part that breaks the usual spelling rules. In said, the s and the d do exactly what your child expects, and only the ai is odd. The regular letters are held by their sounds, so the odd part is the only piece that has to be memorized.

The other half is how a word is practiced. A word is kept by being pulled back out of memory, again and again, over days. When John Dunlosky and colleagues reviewed ten common study techniques for Psychological Science in the Public Interest in 2013, only two earned their highest utility rating: practice testing (retrieving the answer instead of reviewing it) and distributed practice (spreading sessions out). The review covers learning in general rather than sight words, but it reports that “children of all ages benefit from distributed study.” Seeing a word once a week, or hearing it before trying it, is exactly the practice that fades.

Is it normal for a child to forget sight words?

Yes, and by more than most parents expect. Reading researcher Timothy Shanahan notes that even with considerable effort, the hundred most common words are typically not mastered by most children until around Thanksgiving of first grade.

Children also differ a lot in how many readings a word takes. In a 1995 study in Reading and Writing, Linnea Ehri and Saltmarsh compared first graders with older children who had reading difficulties. Both groups could sound out made-up words equally well, but the older children “took significantly more trials to read 16 target words.” Kate Nation and colleagues found that 8- and 9-year-olds’ learning of new words grew with the number of times they saw them, from one exposure up to four.

Practice after a word seems learned is what keeps it. In a 1993 study of poor readers learning to name words quickly, Lemoine, Levy and Hutchinson found that “overlearning” was necessary to prevent forgetting: how well the gains lasted depended on how much practice came after them.

No study gives a number of readings that fits your child. A child who needs many more than a sibling or a classmate is not doing anything wrong. They need more turns, spread out.

Why sight words don’t stick: the common causes and what to change

Work down these seven questions in order and stop at the first one that fits. The early ones come first because fixing them often fixes the ones below. None of them is about your child trying harder.

1. Can your child sound out an ordinary word, like can or went? If they guess from the first letter instead, letter sounds or blending are not solid yet, and a sight word has nothing to attach to. That comes first: my child knows letter sounds but can’t sound out words covers it, and the five-minute reading check shows which piece is missing.

2. Could the words your child forgets be sounded out? School lists are full of ordinary words that happen to be common, like went, big and can. Learned as shapes, they are the easiest words to lose. Take them off the memorize pile and have your child sound them out instead. Our kindergarten, 1st grade and 2nd grade lists are already sorted, and how to teach sight words shows how to sort your school’s list.

3. How many new words is your child working on this week? More than three, and the old ones start to go as the new ones arrive. Two or three a week is plenty, and a new word waits while an old one is still shaky.

4. How often do old words come back? If a word leaves the pile the day it is first read correctly, or practice happens mostly on one day, you will see a word known on Monday and gone by Friday. The fix is five minutes most days, old words first, as set out below.

5. Who says the word first, you or your child? If your child reads a word only after hearing you say it, they are repeating it, not recalling it. Hold up the card and wait. Your child tries first, and you confirm it or give it.

6. Can your child read the word on a card but not inside a sentence? Then it has only been practiced on cards. Hunt for it in a real book, or write a silly sentence together for your child to read back.

7. Are the words your child swaps look-alikes, like was and saw, or where and were? Words that share most of their letters are easy to mix up when they are learned side by side. Introduce them a few days apart, and let one become solid before the other starts. The evidence here is about letters rather than words: in a 1980 study in the Journal of Reading Behavior, preschoolers learning b, d, p and q who began with the least similar letters needed about 31 practice rounds instead of 69. We know of no study that has tested whole words the same way.

If none of the seven fits, the routine is sound and the words simply need more weeks. Even the hundred most common words usually take well into first grade.

How often should we review sight words?

Every day, briefly, with the old words before the new one. A routine that works:

• Five minutes, most days. Longer sessions do not add much at this age, and they do add resistance.
• Old words first. Start with a shuffled pile of the words from the last few weeks, then move on to the new word.
• Missed words go back in. A word your child misses today goes into tomorrow’s pile, and stays there until it is read without a pause.
• Two piles, daily and weekly. A word moves to the weekly pile once your child has read it instantly on three different days. After that it comes back once a week, and if it slips, it goes back to daily.

That three-day rule is ours, a rule of thumb rather than a research finding. The point behind it is that a word is not finished the first day it is read correctly, which is the extra practice Lemoine, Levy and Hutchinson found poor readers needed to keep what they had learned.

The printable word cards on our heart word lists make the piles: kindergarten, 1st grade, 2nd grade and every Dolch level. Print one set and keep the two piles in an envelope on the fridge. For what the rest of the five minutes should look like, see how to teach sight words.

How do heart words help a sight word stick?

Heart words shrink the job to the part of the word that is odd. Reading specialists Linda Farrell, Tina Osenga and Michael Hunter named the approach, and Farrell and colleagues put it this way: “Heart Words have Heart Letters, which are the irregularly spelled part of the word.” Of said, you and from, they write that each has “only one or two letters that had to be memorized.”

So point at the heart part and let the rest of the word be sounded out:

Word	The heart part
said	ai says “e”
was	a says “uh”
from	o says “uh”
they	ey says “ay”
come	o says “uh”, and the e does nothing
of	o says “uh” and f says “v”

Not every heart word has only one odd part. In of, both letters are odd, though that is still just two letters to learn.

To practice one, write the word on a card and draw a small heart over the odd part. Say the word together, point at the heart and say what those letters do, then have your child write the word while saying it. The next time the card comes up, the heart is a reminder of the one thing to remember.

What if my child guesses or refuses?

Guessing is a different habit from forgetting, with a different fix. A child who says “the” for they, or “want” for went, is reading the start of the word and filling in the rest. Cover any pictures, and ask your child to look all the way through the word before saying it. The unfamiliar-word check shows whether guessing has become the habit.

Refusing is usually about how practice feels. Keep sessions short, and end on a word your child knows. If they miss a word, say it for them, have them say it back, and move on rather than turning each mistake into a lesson. Turning the pile into a game helps most of all: sight word games you can play at home has nine that need nothing but paper and a pen.

If practice has become a fight, back off for a week, then restart with two minutes and the words your child already knows.

When is it more than practice?

Forgetting sight words on its own is not a warning sign. It is the most ordinary thing on this page, and with short, steady practice most children show visible change on a single skill within four to six weeks.

Talk to your child’s teacher if progress stops completely for a month, despite regular practice shaped the way this page describes.

Ask about an evaluation if forgetting sight words comes with any of these:

• Letter sounds are learned and then forgotten repeatedly
• A family history of dyslexia or reading difficulty
• Difficulty that is out of step with how your child does in other areas

These are the same signs listed in when to seek help for a child who cannot sound out words, and what “behind in reading” actually means describes the pattern that is worth an evaluation. Start with the teacher, and ask them who else should be involved.

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This page is for information and does not diagnose anything. If you have concerns about your child’s reading, start with their teacher.