Year 1

After recapping their prior learning from Year R, children will begin to learn Phase 5 in Year 1. During this phase, children will learn alternative graphemes for the sounds they know (for example /ai/ can be written as ‘ai’ or as ‘ay’). As well as this, they will learn alternative pronunciations of graphemes that they know (for example the ‘ea’ grapheme can be pronounced as /ea/ in eat or as /e/ in head).

Please see the overviews for each half-term attached below. 

Children will continue to bring home a fully-decodable reading book. They will have read this book three times at school, so should be familiar with it and should be able to read it independently. The aim of this is to give your child lots of opportunities to practice their reading and become fluent and confident before moving on to their next book.

Please aim to read this book with them at home three times over the week.

If teachers notice that your child is not keeping up with the learning in their main phonics lessons, they will receive ‘Keep up’ provision regularly. This will be extra sessions to re-learn GPCs and practice blending skills.

Towards the end of Year 1, all children will be assessed using the Phonics Screening Check. This is completed with all Year 1 children across the country. Your child will be asked to read 40 words – both real words and alien (not real) words. The aim of this check is to see whether children are applying their phonic knowledge to reading words by sounding out the individual graphemes and blending the sounds together. Little Wandle have a guide to alien words on the parent page under the ‘How we teach’ section. It can be found here: https://www.littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk/resources/for-parents/#tabnametabHowWeTeach

If your child does not pass the screening check, they will be identified for further support with their Year 2 teachers and will have to re-take the check at the end of Year 2.