Y1 English

Reading
During Year 1, pupils will build on work from the Early Years Foundation Stage, making sure that they can sound and blend unfamiliar printed words quickly and accurately using the phonic knowledge and skills that they have already learnt. Teaching should ensure that pupils continue to learn new grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs) and revise and consolidate those learnt earlier.

 
Pupils need to develop the skill of blending the sounds into words for reading and establish the habit of applying this skill whenever they encounter new words.
 
Throughout Foundation Stage and Key Stage One, we teach daily phonics sessions to develop children's skills in reading and spelling. We follow Letters and Sounds, a detailed and systematic programme for teaching high quality phonics published by the Department for Education and Skills. 
 
Reading – word reading
Statutory requirements
Pupils should be taught to:
  • apply phonic knowledge and skills as the route to decode words
  • respond speedily with the correct sound to graphemes (letters or groups of letters) for all 40+ phonemes, including, where applicable, alternative sounds for graphemes
  • read accurately by blending sounds in unfamiliar words containing GPCs that have been taught
  • read common exception words, noting unusual correspondences between spelling and sound and where these occur in the word
  • read words containing taught GPCs and –s, –es, –ing, –ed, –er and –est endings
  • read other words of more than one syllable that contain taught GPCs
  • read words with contractions [for example, I'm, I'll, we'll], and understand that the apostrophe represents the omitted letter(s)
  • read aloud accurately books that are consistent with their developing phonic knowledge and that do not require them to use other strategies to work out words
  • re-read these books to build up their fluency and confidence in word reading.
Reading: Comprehension
Statutory requirements
Pupils should be taught to:
Develop pleasure in reading, motivation to read, vocabulary and understanding by:
  • listening to and discussing a wide range of poems, stories and non-fiction at a level beyond that at which they can read independently
  • being encouraged to link what they read or hear read to their own experiences
  • becoming very familiar with key stories, fairy stories and traditional tales, retelling them and considering their particular characteristics
  • recognising and joining in with predictable phrases
  • learning to appreciate rhymes and poems, and to recite some by heart
  • discussing word meanings, linking new meanings to those already known
Understand both the books they can already read accurately and fluently and those they listen to by:
  • drawing on what they already know or on background information and vocabulary provided by the teacher
  • checking that the text makes sense to them as they read and correcting inaccurate reading
  • discussing the significance of the title and events
  • making inferences on the basis of what is being said and done
  • predicting what might happen on the basis of what has been read so far
  • participate in discussion about what is read to them, taking turns and listening to what others say
  • explain clearly their understanding of what is read to them.
Writing
Writing: Composition
Pupils should understand, through demonstration, the skills and processes essential to writing: that is, thinking aloud as they collect ideas, drafting, and re-reading to check their meaning is clear.


Statutory requirements
Pupils should be taught to:
Write sentences by:
  • saying out loud what they are going to write about
  • composing a sentence orally before writing it
  • sequencing sentences to form short narratives
  • re-reading what they have written to check that it makes sense
  • discuss what they have written with the teacher or other pupilsrRead aloud their writing clearly enough to be heard by their peers and the teacher.
Writing : Transcription
Reading should be taught alongside spelling, so that pupils understand that they can read back words they have spelt.
 
Pupils should be shown how to segment spoken words into individual phonemes and then how to represent the phonemes by the appropriate grapheme(s). It is important to recognise that phoneme-grapheme correspondences (which underpin spelling) are more variable than grapheme-phoneme correspondences (which underpin reading). For this reason, pupils need to do much more word-specific rehearsal for spelling than for reading.

Statutory requirements
Spelling (see English Appendix 1)
Pupils should be taught to:
Spell:
  • words containing each of the 40+ phonemes already taught
  • common exception words
  • the days of the week
Name the letters of the alphabet:
  • naming the letters of the alphabet in order
  • using letter names to distinguish between alternative spellings of the same sound
Add prefixes and suffixes:
  • using the spelling rule for adding –s or –es as the plural marker for nouns and the third person singular marker for verbs
  • using the prefix un–
  • using –ing, –ed, –er and –est where no change is needed in the spelling of root words [for example, helping, helped, helper, eating, quicker, quickest]
Apply simple spelling rules and guidance (see English Appendix 1)

Write from memory simple sentences dictated by the teacher that include words using the GPCs and common exception words taught so far.
 
Writing: Vocabulary, grammar and punctuation
Pupils should be taught to recognise sentence boundaries in spoken sentences and to use the vocabulary listed in English Appendix 2 ('Terminology for pupils') when their writing is discussed. Pupils should begin to use some of the distinctive features of Standard English in their writing.
 
Statutory requirements
Pupils should be taught to:
Develop their understanding of the concepts set out in English Appendix 2 by:
  • leaving spaces between words
  • joining words and joining clauses using and
  • beginning to punctuate sentences using a capital letter and a full stop, question mark or exclamation mark
  • using a capital letter for names of people, places, the days of the week, and the personal pronoun 'I'
  • learning the grammar for year 1 in English Appendix 2
  • use the grammatical terminology in English Appendix 2 in discussing their writing.
Writing: Handwriting
Pupils should be able to form letters correctly and confidently. The size of the writing implement (pencil, pen) should not be too large for a young pupil's hand. Whatever is being used should allow the pupil to hold it easily and correctly so that bad habits are avoided.
 
Left-handed pupils should receive specific teaching to meet their needs.
Statutory requirements
Pupils should be taught to :
  • sit correctly at a table, holding a pencil comfortably and correctly
  • begin to form lower-case letters in the correct direction, starting and finishing in the right place
  • form capital letters
  • form digits 0-9
  • understand which letters belong to which handwriting 'families' (i.e. letters that are formed in similar ways) and to practise these.