Phonics - including reading and writing

Phonics and Reading in Year 1

There are guides and glossaries on our class page to help with phonics and reading.

You will also find the strategy cards that we use in out guided reading sessions to give the children both phonics based and non-phonics based strategies to help with in their reading. We advise thinking about have one or two you could work on together. 

Writing and Spelling in Year 1

By the end of year 1, the children are expected to apply their phonics as their primary way to write. The words they should be spelling correctly are the common exception words (that don't work using phonics) and the high frequency words (words that they probably use frequently and can use phonics to spell). All of these words are included on the Year 1 Word Mat available to download from our class page, this is what the children use in class to find words they want to write.

The suffixes and prefix the children need to be able to use are:

• un_
• _ed
• _ing
• _er
• _est

They should be able to apply these to a word that does not need a change e.g. 'rain' to 'raining'.

It prepares them well for year 2 to know some words need a change and there is a picture of our working wall below showing how we guide them through how to add a suffix correctly. We try the rules from left to right until we find the one that applies.

To find the relevant games for year 1, once legged in go to 'Resources' at the top of the page and choose games and resources that link to phases 3, 4 and 5a by clicking on the that one of this phases on the pink band at the top of the page.

Keep a log of the specific sounds you choose for the games and try to work through them one by one so the children are exposed and practise them all.

Try to also vary the games you are playing to ensure the children practise different skills, e.g. recognising tricky and high frequency sound, recognising sounds presented on their own (e.g. 'ch'), blending and segmenting sounds.