Downloads
Word cards
Printable cards with the plain word on the front and the coded word on the back: high-frequency words from the SD23 Early Literacy Profile lists, all of Dolch’s sight words, and word sums for students who have finished the ELP lists.
ELP high-frequency words
Dolch sight words
All 220 of E. W. Dolch’s sight words (1936), one set for each of his levels, 10 to a page. Each card’s tag names its level and the ELP list that teaches the word, if one does, so you can set aside the cards a class has already met. Where the ELP words come from shows how the two lists line up.
Grade 3 word sums
An extension for students who have finished the ELP lists: 118 cards built on the list words. The front has the whole word. The back has its word sum, such as make + ing → making, and the word coded with a seam at each join. Each group starts on a new sheet, so you can print just the rule you're teaching.
Download the PDF (480 KB, 15 sheets, 10 to a page)
- Sheets 1–2: words on the lists that are already built from parts (12 cards)
- Sheets 3–7: endings that leave the base alone (43 cards)
- Sheet 8: the last consonant doubles (7 cards)
- Sheets 9–10: the e drops before a vowel, and stays before a consonant (13 cards)
- Sheet 11: y turns to i, and when it stays (10 cards)
- Sheets 12–13: prefixes (15 cards)
- Sheet 14: pairs that aren't word sums (9 cards)
- Sheet 15: compounds from list words (9 cards)
Printing
Print in colour and double-sided, flipping on the long edge, so each back lands behind its front. Print one sheet first and hold it up to a window to check that the backs line up, then cut on the grey lines. Spaces left over on a sheet are blank cards to write on.
The coding
The coded side shows the word in the notation, and Reading the marks says what each mark means.
(Under construction: a few markings are still being settled, most of the word sums and a few of the Dolch words among them. Next: settle them, then update the cards that change.)
Where the words come from
The Early Literacy Profile (ELP) Assessment & Instructional Guide, Central Okanagan Public Schools (2025), pp. 16–17. The guide doesn't name a source for its lists; it says they were aligned with a phonics scope and sequence, keeping one word for each pattern. All but three of its 148 words are E. W. Dolch’s (1936), as Word lists shows. These cards aren't an SD23 publication. The district's own ELP page is the place for the assessment itself.
Word sums
Word sums and word matrices come from Melvyn Ramsden's Real Spelling, and Peter Bowers brought them into classrooms as structured word inquiry. The base words come from the ELP lists and E. W. Dolch's grade 3 list (Dolch, 1936).