Welcome to Year One with Miss S Bal...

Phewwwww REMOTE LEARNING over and done with, now it's time to be back in class together and learn lots of wonderful new topics & skills! 

During this term we will be continuing with our Continuous Provision style learning...

This means your child will work with an adult to complete English, Phonics, Reading, Mathematics, PSHE, Science, Computing, RE and PE lessons as well learn through play in and out of the classroom...

During this term we will assess the areas of the curriculum that were taught during SPRING REMOTE LEARNING as well as assess the areas of the curriculum that were taught before LOCKDOWN 3.0. This will support us in knowing where your child is at in their learning journey...

Reading books are CHANGED and SENT OUT on a MONDAY AFTERNOON and need to be RETURNED to school on FRIDAY so that book bags can be quarantined over the weekend! 

Thank you for your continued support with reading at home!

Throughout the term there will be a huge push and intervention on phonics! Phonics is our key area. Children will be developing their phonics to support their reading ability as well as their writing, at Brickhouse we feel that phonics is a huge importance that underpins English ability and attainment. 

Tricky words/Common Exception Words will be another area of the curriculum we will boost and focus on daily...

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 are 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.

Useful links for home learning...