Year 1 Supporting Children at Home

All Year One children will take a phonics screening test this summer. Children will need to be able to apply their phonics knowledge to read real and "alien" words. 

The Y1 teachers have sent home a phonics mat with some of the trickier sounds so that your child can practise over the holidays. Please put these sounds into real words and nonsense words before challenging your child to read them eg "a_e" could be in the real words "make", "came" and "late" or in the alien words "splake", "brate" or "bame". 

There are some great games on the Internet to support with this, such as those on the "Phonics Play" site; just search for "Letters and Sounds phases 2 to 6" to find a range of ideas. Parents can also view the past paper tests on the Government web site by searching for "Y1 phonics screening test". The pass mark is usually around 32/40.

We recently sent a letter to Y1 parents stressing the need for children to have a faster recall of their number bonds. Thank you to all parents who worked on number bonds with their children at home; we are really starting to see a difference in the children's confidence. We are also working on doubles and halves, writing digits correctly, finding different ways to make target numbers and reading and recognising two digit numbers. The "Top Marks" web site has some good ideas for practising key number skills, as well as the "ICT games" site. 

Please continue to support your child with home reading, sounding out and discussing new vocabulary and asking questions about what has been read. Many children are now progressing well through the rainbow, and this increased frequency of reading is having a positive effect on the quality of the Y1 children's writing. Thank you for this continued support.