The Dolch word list is based on studies that count the frequency of words used. The list is the several hundred most-commonly used words in written English. And yep, many of them end up being the phonetically irregular words like Who and The.
So to answer the question: Early readers and Chapter books should use three kinds of words:
1) Words that are very easy to sound out. Phonetically regular words like cat, dog, popcorn, fishstick.
2) The Dolch words--first graders are expected to learn the first 100, or some variation of them
3) Key vocabulary words that may be more challenging but that kids can figure out easily from the context of the story. A few of these are fine, especially if they are nouns, because those are easy to include in the illustrations.
You don't have to think too hard about using the Dolch list, though. It's almost impossible to write an English sentence WITHOUT using them!
So to answer the question: Early readers and Chapter books should use three kinds of words:
1) Words that are very easy to sound out. Phonetically regular words like cat, dog, popcorn, fishstick.
2) The Dolch words--first graders are expected to learn the first 100, or some variation of them
3) Key vocabulary words that may be more challenging but that kids can figure out easily from the context of the story. A few of these are fine, especially if they are nouns, because those are easy to include in the illustrations.
You don't have to think too hard about using the Dolch list, though. It's almost impossible to write an English sentence WITHOUT using them!