Picture Me Reading Dolch High Frequency sight word cards have mostly black-and-white illustrations as visual cues for a very specific reason.

Other (copycat) picture cards use very colorful illustrations because the colors give the cards visual appeal for teachers and students, making them more attractive to the purchaser.  However, through much trial and error, Dr Marlys Isaacson, the Educational Psychologist who originally developed Picture Me Reading, discovered that colorful illustrations are an unhelpful distraction from the sight words being learned.  This means that colors slow down the learning process considerably, adding an unnecessary layer of difficulty to the already complex task of learning to read.

Our black-and-white illustrations are simple, and do not distract the learner from the word being learned.  Instead, they remind the learner at a glance of the concept behind the word.  This in turn reminds them of the word.  In time, the black-and-white image comes to mind as soon as the learner sees the word in print, even without the picture cue.  Eventually the word is mastered, and the image is no longer needed.  The visual/conceptual clues on the cards reduce the number of exposures to the word needed in order to master the word.

Picture Me Reading does use some color.  There are a few words in which color is the illustration for the word, and therefore necessary to illustrate the word.  Out of our 224 words, only 18 words have color illustrations.  In these cases, the illustration is just a letter or numeral, highlighted with color.  And the color words, such as ‘red’ and ‘blue’, are printed in the appropriate color.

A side benefit of having a few cards with a small amount of color in the illustration is that young children are excited when given the “special” cards.  I have often been asked by a young student, “When will I get the rest of the color cards?”  Or, “You haven’t given me a special card in AGES!”  They relate these to the “rare” cards they collect when they are collectors of trading cards, such as baseball, football or Pokémon cards.

This leads to another critical point.  Sending cards home with your students to practice their words is wise.  Word practice using their Picture Me Reading cards is homework that your students will actually enjoy, because they are confident with the words you will send home.  This is because they only take home the cards they are already very familiar with.  Also, because children think of them as playing cards, they can’t wait to show them off to family and friends, giving them more practice toward word mastery.  Some of my students have even taught high frequency sight words to younger siblings!

We have pocket-sized cards for the purpose of sending them home with children for daily practice.  If you are working with multiple children, we have PDFs of the individual cards.  This is a once-off purchase for a whole school, which can be used over and over again.  The teacher or classroom assistant can print out and send home just the words being learned.  This saves the school money and space in the classroom because only cards that are needed are printed.  For me, the PDFs are a game-changer!

Returning to the original subject, we primarily use black-and-white illustrations because they are less distracting for the learner.  However, there is another equally important benefit of using these simple black-and-white illustrations.  Picture Me Reading cards are not childish looking, unlike our competitors’ products.  This makes our cards ideal for older children, teenagers and adults learning to read for the first time or improving reading skills.  They are also suitable for anyone of any age who is learning English as an additional language.

We have personally used Picture Me Reading cards to help teenagers and adults learn to read.  Many of these people have spent years being taught to read in school and adult literacy courses, without success.  They find the illustrations humorous and not childish, making learning with them fun, not embarrassing.  We have also used Picture Me Reading cards to help children who are just starting in English-language schools to learn the language as well as learning to read in English.

Our product line includes a book called Make Your Own Pictographs.  This book provides instructions for helping parents, teachers and learners to make pictograms for any extra words they would like to learn using this method, which are not included on the Dolch High Frequency word list.   Make Your Own Pictographs also provides dozens of photocopiable words and pictographs grouped by subject matter.  The book includes animal words, seasonal words, weather words, and more.  Again, the simpler illustrations work best for the learner, and also for anyone making their own cards.

Now you understand why most Picture Me Reading cards are black-and-white and will remain so.  Browse our sight word cards to experience the difference!