Year 1 is a very exciting year in a child’s life. What they learn in English will set the foundations for the many years ahead. They are now part of big school, following the same timetable, although they do get an extra playtime in the afternoon.
This is a marked difference from foundation when they had access to free play all day.
As Year 1 is the first year in Key stage 1, this is the year where learning academic skills really starts. Children will be encouraged to work more independently. They will have to develop better co-ordination and be able to write more clearly. They will also need to be more articulate and start to express themselves. They will start to write in sentences and draw pictures to help them organise their thoughts.
English or Literacy as it is called in Primary, is made up of Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening, so these are the skills children need to develop. Therefore, let’s look at what Year 1 learn in Literacy.
What Year 1 learn in Literacy
Phonics in Year 1
Children started learning phonics back in Nursery, but this year they do the most work in the phonics programme. Children, work through the phonics phases rapidly, usually leaving only a couple of the 6 phases for Year 2.
At the end of this year, children will also have a phonics screening test, to test their ability to code and decode words using their phonics skills.
At the beginning of Year 1, children should be able to read most of the letters and phonic sounds in the English language, for example: a,s, p, oo, ee, ai, sh, ff, ing, igh, and so on.
They should also be able to read unfamiliar words containing these sounds accurately and fluently without hesitation.
If they get stuck, they should be able to use their phonics and reading skills to sound out the words to make a word close to the one they need to say, then guess what the word actually is.
They should also be able to say common words such as band, stand, sleep, without needing to sound out the words and also know all the ‘tricky’ words from the year 1 and 2 word banks. (click here)
These include words like: ask, said, where, my which cannot be sounded out using phonics rules.
Year 1 learn in English – Spelling
By the end of this year children will need to know all 40 phoneme sounds, and as many graphemes that go with them as possible.
Other spellings children learn this year include:
suffixes –s, -es, -ing, -ed, -er and -est.
Year 1 learn in English – Reading
As well as spelling the tricky year 1, exception words, children should also be able to read these tricky words easily and fluently.
They must read a range of stories, poems and non-fiction to develop their confidence, knowledge and fluency.
To aid their understanding when reading, children must be able to learn and retell stories they’ve heard. They should also know and be able to say familiar rhymes and nursery rhymes.
To develop accurate and speedy reading skills, they should continue to read regularly. As well as read a wide variety of stories, including poems and non-fiction books or information books, such as about birds, animals and the life around us.
The more frequently they read, the sooner they will be able to increase their vocabulary, understanding and the general knowledge. This will lead to greater fluency which they can apply to other parts of their schooling.
Children should be encouraged to read their books more than once to develop fluency and greater understanding as well as self-correcting any mistakes they make while reading.
They should use their phonics knowledge to identify words containing the suffixes -s, -es, -ing, -ed, -er and -est.
Year 1s will be expected to read at home regularly and most children will receive a reading record for parents to sign weekly.
Parents should support Year 1 learn in English by:
Taking it in turns to read with reluctant readers and also read to readers who are able to read well to help them aid fluency.
Look at encyclopaedias, picture dictionaries and other non-fiction books together, as well as story books.
Talk about what they have read, what they liked and why they liked it. Also discuss feelings.
Year 1 learn in English – Writing
Children will need to form all lower case and capital letters, including the digits from 0-9.
They will start to write the date in their books each day. This will help them to learn to write the days of the week.
Children will also learn to write and spell words with the following suffixes or word endings in: -s, -es, -ing, -ed, -er and -est.
They will also need to write and use words with the prefix un-.
Children should be able to follow on from last year and now write in full sentences
By the end of the year, children should be able to write their own short story and discus anything they write.
They should also be able to use:
- Full stops
- Capital letters and
- Use a variety of conjunctions like and, but, so to make sentences longer
Year 1 learn in English – Handwriting
Finally, they should be able to write all the letters of the alphabet and the digits 0-9. This includes:
- writing on the line,
- with capital letters at the beginning of sentences and
- full stops at the end.
They should also be able to use:
- finger spaces in between words
- form letters correctly and the right size.
- The capital letters should be bigger than the lowercase letters and not vice versa.
- Some letters may be the mirror images.
- Some children may start to write in cursive writing, depending on the handwriting programme their school has followed.
As writing is naturally harder than reading, children should be encouraged to write down notes, shopping lists and writing in role play as a means of developing their writing skills. This will help them greatly, as the year progresses.
Year 1 learn in English – Targets
- Read Fiction stories with familiar settings and poetry with rhymes and predictable repetitive patterns
- Identify Non-fiction: signs, labels, captions, lists, instructions
- Read and follow simple instructions and make lists
- Use full stops and capital letters and start to use question marks and exclamation marks.
- Use capitals in names, John, Sally and titles, Mr, Mrs.
- They will be able to write a sentence and know that a line of writing is not a sentence
- Be able to write about personal experiences in simple sentences
- Spell simple cvc words; cat, bat etc…
- Write own rhymes and stories by changing the beginning, middle and end of well-known ones
- Write own stories with beginning, middle and end. A few lines for each
- Understand the information on the front of a book, author’s name, illustrator, title etc
- Understand that the blurb on the back cover of a book gives information on what the story is about
- Be able to read all common words used frequently for example; the, that, and, here, is, me, once, there, were, this
- Understand spellings, such as to, two and too
- Read own text and make sure it makes sense
- Understand the use of a contents page and index page in books
- Understand how the plurals are formed using ‘s’, for example; shoe becomes shoes, book becomes books.
- Choose different settings for stories, for example; in winter; in the jungle, at home etc.
- Show sequence in stories; such as, first, next, after, when
- Understand the use of question marks
- Try to understand how past tense is created from present tense. Words that end in ‘ed’
- Use words with the suffixes -s, -es, -ing, -ed, -er and -est
- Understand what consonants and vowels are
- Form lowercase and uppercase letters.