A primer is the first textbook for teaching reaching. The earliest primer was printed in the 15th century and consisted of the alphabet and several Catholic prayers. Primer words are the first words that a student learns when being taught reading. Pre-primer are words that a child should recognize before they begin formal reading instruction. Today, the terms kindergarten and preschool are more commonly used than primer and pre-primer.
In the late 1930s, Edward Dolch comprised a list of words commonly used in beginning reading programs. He came up with 220 words, excluding nouns, that were the most frequently used. He then divided it into five levels: pre-primer, primer, first, second and third grade. Nouns were listed separately and not divided into grade levels. These words still comprise more than 50 percent of all words found in textbooks today. The list was published in his 1948 book "Problems in Reading."
Dolch's list of pre-primer words contains 40 different words, mostly verbs, adjectives and adverbs. The adjectives and adverbs are: a, away, big, blue, funny, here, little, not, one, red, the, three, two, where and yellow. Verbs on the list are: can, come, find, go, help, is, jump, look, make, not, play, run, said and see. Six pronouns are considered pre-primer: I, it, me, my, we and you. There are also six conjunctions and pronouns: and, down, for, in, to and up.
The Dolch Sight Word List sometimes gets wrapped up in the long-standing between whole language and phonics reading instruction. The Dolch Sight Word List is considered a whole language technique because it focuses on recognizing words and not sounds. Phonics teaches by connecting sounds with letters and groups of letters. Because about one-third of the Dolch word list consists of words that do not conform to regular phonetic patterns, it can be used in conjunction with or before teaching phonetic reading techniques.