In Year 1, we learn the ‘Phase 5’ phonics stage. Here, we start introducing alternative spellings for sounds, like ‘igh’. Children master these in reading and begin to see them using them correctly in spelling.
Children learn new graphemes (different ways of spelling each sound) and alternative pronunciations for these: for example, learning that the grapheme ‘ow’ makes a different sound in ‘snow’ and ‘cow’.
They should become quicker at blending, and start to do it silently.
They learn about split digraphs such as the a-e in ‘name.’
They’ll start to choose the right graphemes when spelling, and will learn more tricky words, including ‘people,’ ‘water’ and ‘friend’. They also learn one new phoneme: /zh/, as in ‘treasure.’
By the end of Year 1, children should be able to:
- Say the sound for any grapheme they are shown
- Write the common graphemes for any given sound (e.g. ‘e,’ ‘ee,’ ‘ie,’ ‘ea’)
- Use their phonics knowledge to read and spell unfamiliar words of up to three syllables
- Read all of the 100 high frequency words, and be able to spell most of them
- Form letters correctly
At the end of Year 1, all children are given a Phonics Screening Check to ensure they have mastered the appropriate knowledge. Please click on the link to watch our short video.