Cut the list to five
The most common cause of sight word trouble is volume. A child working through twenty words gets a handful of exposures to each; a child working through five gets enough repetition for the words to become automatic.
Five words, every day, until all five are instant. Then swap out the ones that stuck and add new ones. Progress feels slower and is considerably faster.
Map the sounds instead of memorising the shape
Sight words are usually taught as whole shapes to memorise. This works poorly, because the brain stores written words by connecting letters to sounds, not by photographing outlines.
Take 'said'. The s and the d are exactly what a child expects. Only the middle is unusual. Say the word, have the child identify the three sounds, then show which letters spell each one and mark the odd part. You have turned an arbitrary shape into one small thing to remember.
- Say the word aloud, then break it into its sounds.
- Match each sound to its letters.
- Mark only the part that behaves unexpectedly.
- Have the child write it while saying the sounds.
Practise in sentences, not in isolation
A word recognised on a flashcard is not necessarily available while reading. The skill you want is recognition inside running text, so practise it there.
Write silly sentences using the five words together. Have your child read them aloud, then write their own. Recognition in context is the thing that transfers.
When to ask for help
Some difficulty is normal and resolves with the changes above. A few patterns are worth raising with a teacher: a child who cannot hear individual sounds in a spoken word by the middle of first grade, who has learned fewer than ten sight words by the end of first grade despite consistent practice, or who reads a word correctly on one line and not the next.
That last pattern in particular — inconsistent recognition of a word practised many times — is worth mentioning early. It is common, it is well understood, and support works much better when it starts sooner.