1000 Instant Words

I wanted to use this book for my child but part of the book was missing. Pages from 5 to 30 were ripped out.

I bought Fry's 2004 book, where he makes some concessions to phonics. I wish I had bought earlier versions where the emphasis is much more relentlessly on Whole Word. However, thanks to Look Inside, I was able to find the money quote from a 1996 edition. This quote has dogged all discussions of reading for decades: "Beginning readers...should be able to read the first 300 of these words `instantly' -- without a moment's hesitation -- because these words make up 65% of all written material." In a moment I'll show you the absurdity of Sight Words, Dolch Words, Fry Words, whatever... But first let me tell you an anecdote from years ago. I was having dinner with a teacher; she said she was teaching her students to memorize words on sight. I remember saying, "Makes sense. That would give kids a jump on the whole thing." I think my reaction--so typical but so dumb--explains why the Education Establishment was able to keep this scam in play for so long. Once we're experienced phonetic readers, years away from school, we can't empathize with the incredible complexity of learning shapes. Now we get to the genius of Fry's marketing. He coined the phrase "instant words." What he partly means is that kids should recognize these words instantly. But we all hear something else: that people can instantly learn these words. And there we get to the biggest lie since cigarettes are good for you. Here is a thought experiment. Pick a category you're comfortable with -- cars, flags, chemical structures, celebrities, famous paintings, etc. Create a pack of 100 cards, roughly the same size, each showing a different flag, for example, and lay them out on a table. Have someone point a stick at them randomly and quickly, at least one a second. Name them. I bet that you will not be able to keep pace. Memory is fickle. Even something you know intimately can fade away for a few seconds. Unless someone has an extraordinarily retentive memory, there's no instant! But keep in mind this is only 100 things that you, a smart adult, already know. Now let's expand the deck to 300 shapes. Think you can name those flags or faces instantly? I bet you're beginning to have some sense of how vast this project is. And 300 is just the beginning. Even 1000 means you're illiterate. You need 100,000 at least! Part of the scam is the insinuation that somehow words are easier shapes than art or coins or cars. Truth is, each English word comes in SEVERAL shapes. So we reach the great abyss: of all the shapes you could try to memorize, I suspect the hardest is English words! Imagine the child has memorized this shape: fight. But the next week the child encounters: FIGHT. Do you think even one child in ten would realize it's the same word? If you know phonics, well of course. But we're talking shapes now and look at how every letter changes dramatically. (There are also handwritten forms, and exotic typefaces that the child might see in a newspaper. These add more layers of difficu

I used Dr. Fry's 1000 Instant Words list as the basis of my spelling program. My students made excellent progress and test scores were great. Thanks for offering this type of resource. C. Howsden

As a remedial reading teacher, I will highly recommend this book to the parents of the children I teach. This book includes 1000 words listed according to frequency of usage in the English language, as well as a list of these same words listed alphabetically with the "frequency of usage" rating following each word. I am pleased to see that games and techniques for making the learning of these words fun are included. There are also suggestions of how to evaluate a student's proficiency in reading these words. Each year I conduct parent meetings to assist parents in learning how to help their children. I will highly recommend this book at that time.