Welcome to Pine Class
Top Tips for Year 1 Parents
- Look for opportunities to talk about numbers. If you see numbers, can your child read them? What is the next number, or the one before? Use vocabulary of more/less/fewer/most/fewest. Encourage adding by counting on in their head, counting in 2s, 5s and 10s forwards and backwards. Try to involve word problems in everyday situations. E.g. If I have this pizza and it needs to be cut into quarters and I have 12 toppings. How can I fairly share out the toppings?
- Share books with your child – read to them and talk about the story. Discuss what you like/dislike about the books. Try to use a selection of questions to encourage the child to infer from the text. (Make a presumption of what the answer could be based on the information given ) E.g. Did Callum do the right thing? What makes you think that? How did everyone feel about the decision he made? If the decision was the opposite, what might have happened?
- Reading every day for 5 to 10 minutes – regular reading practice is vital to support their progress. Those children who read every day are more likely to become confident readers by the end of Year 1 giving them a solid basis for their future learning.
- Help your child to practise reading and spelling the first 100 High Frequency words at speed. If they can recognise them on sight, reading fluency will be greatly improved.
- Think about it – does the word they said make sense?
- Look at the picture – What is happening in the picture that can give a clue.
- Sound it out – this works well as long as it is not a ‘tricky’ word.
- Go forward – miss out the tricky word and carry on reading the rest of the sentence. Can you think of what might make sense in the gap?
- Go back – Go back and re-read the sentence – this helps them to make sense of what they have just read.
- Encouraging correct tripod pencil grip – the more a child holds their pencil correctly, the more natural it will be to them.
- Encouraging correct letter and number formation when writing at home. If they reverse some letters ask them to re-write it 5 times to develop fluency in writing the letter and hopefully encourage them to get out of the habit.
Phonics Screening Check
The phonics screening check is taken individually by all children in Year 1 in England, and is usually taken in June. It is designed to give teachers and parents information on how your child is progressing in phonics. It will help to identify whether your child needs additional support at this stage so that they do not fall behind in this vital early reading skill.
There are two sections in this 40-word check and it assesses phonics skills and knowledge learned through Reception and Year 1. Your child will read up to four words per page for their teacher and they will probably do the check in one sitting of about 5–10 minutes.
It checks that your child can:
Sound out and blend graphemes in order to read simple words.
Read phonically decodable one-syllable and two-syllable words, e.g. cat, sand, windmill.
Read a selection of nonsense words which are referred to as pseudo words.
These are words that are phonically decodable but are not actual words with an associated meaning e.g. brip, snorb. Pseudo words are included in the check specifically to assess whether your child can decode a word using phonics skills and not their memory. The pseudo words will be shown to your child with a picture of a monster and they will be asked to tell their teacher what sort of monster it is by reading the word. This not only makes the check a bit more fun, but provides the children with a context for the nonsense word which is independent from any existing vocabulary they may have. Crucially, it does not provide any clues, so your child just has to be able to decode it. Children generally find nonsense amusing so they will probably enjoy reading these words.
The check is not about passing or failing but checking appropriate progress is being made. If children do not reach the required standard, then the teacher will be in touch to discuss plans and offer additional, tailored support to ensure that your child can catch up. Children progress at different speeds so not reaching the threshold score does not necessarily mean there is a serious problem. Your child will re-sit the check the following summer term.
For the last few years, the threshold mark (or pass standard) set by the government has been 32 correct answers out of 40.
