Welcome to Year One with Mrs. S Mann...

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Autumn 2021

Here at Brickhouse, we feel that the transition between EYFS and KS1 is hugely important to get right! We have seen over the years how settled and more confident children are in their learning, when they can ease into the KS1 formal approach, so over the autumn term children in Year One still have the opportunity to learn through play and explore different provisions set up in the classroom…

During the autumn term, children work in small focus groups with an adult, we’ll work on key skills such as reading, writing, and mathematics.

These sessions are purposeful, active, and importantly FUN!

Read our What’s Coming Up to see what your child will get up to during their first term in Year One J

Phonics is our key priority in Year One; children will be developing their phonics to support their reading as well as their writing, at Brickhouse we feel that phonics is of huge importance that underpins English progress and attainment.

Great tools to support phonics at home:

- PhonicsPlay

- EducationCity

- Reading Planet

- Youtube videos - phonic songs and teaching sounds

- Alphablocks

- Reading signs and labels around the house or out and about

- Writing a shopping list to take to the shops

If you like further support on how to support phonics at home please do not hesitate to email me at: year1@brickhouse.sandwell.sch.uk

Tricky words/sight words/common exception words is another area of phonics your child will develop, practise and need support with.

Here's why this area is important for your child to learn...

Tricky words cannot be sounded out easily. 

Early readers may find tricky words difficult to read as they have not yet learned some of the graphemes in those words: the word ‘want’ has the ‘o’ sound instead of ‘a,’ which is how it is spelt. This means that children find it difficult to read out the word, as the sounds don’t accompany the letters. They are sometimes known as irregular words, common exception words, or sight words. 

How to support your child to read tricky words:

• Encourage your child to sound out the parts of the word they know and give your child support with sounds they don't know. Using the same tricky word example 'want,' your child can pronounce the 'w' sound before you demonstrate how to pronounce the 'a' sound.

• Explain letter-sound correspondences - for example, the letter 'a' is pronounced differently in 'ran' and 'was.' Overtime if you keep explaining the difference in the way a letter looks and sounds, your child will be able to recognise both letter-sound correspondences which eventually will make it easier for them to read new words.

• Compile a list of tricky words you know your child struggles with and practise these until they can read them independently and confidently
• Practice and repetition is important when teaching your child to read tricky words 

What are Common Exception Words?

Common exception words are words that do not follow the common phonetic spelling rules children learn in Year 1 and Year 2. These are also called tricky words or sight words as you must learn to recognise them, and can't sound them out. They aren't decodable using the normal rules and letter-sounds in phonics.

Please download the PDF documents below to use at home, you can find these words inside your child’s home reading record as well J

Supporting Reading...

Reading Planet allows children to read books online, your child will be allocated books suited to their current reading band colour. Using this website is effective to improve, encourage and engage reading at home. (Please find the link further down the page)
 

Please make sure that home reading books are returned to school on TUESDAY and FRIDAY to be changed. Your child's book will NOT be changed if there is no adult comment in their home reading record.

Useful links to support home learning...