UK
← All Year 1 English

Phonics & reading words

Year 1 · Reading

Read familiar words, listen carefully and connect the letters you see with the word you hear.

Choose a game

Take your time, try a game and collect stars.

Activities to try together away from the screen

Blend and read

Join familiar sounds to read a word.

  1. A grown-up writes cat, pin and sun on separate cards. Choose words with letter sounds your child already knows.
  2. Point to each grapheme and say its sound using the pronunciation taught at school. Move a finger underneath as your child blends the sounds.
  3. Read the whole word again. Change one card to a familiar new word and repeat without rushing.

Read it again

Build confidence through a familiar little book.

  1. Choose a decodable book matched to the sounds your child has been taught. Let them read a short section.
  2. Pause when needed and encourage sounding out and blending, rather than guessing from a picture.
  3. Return to the same section another day. Notice which words are becoming easier to recognise.

Helping your child with phonics & reading words

What children practise

Year 1 word reading brings together knowledge of letter–sound correspondences, blending and growing fluency. Children learn to work out unfamiliar printed words and begin to recognise familiar words more readily. Choosing the written word that matches a recording is a short recognition activity; it does not teach every correspondence or replace a systematic phonics lesson.

Begin with a small set of words your child can almost read independently. A successful short session is more useful than racing through a long list that contains untaught spellings. Ask your child to point to the letters they used, then read the word naturally.

Choosing the next step

If a child confuses cat and cap, draw attention to the final grapheme and invite them to blend again. If they can decode accurately but slowly, revisit the same words in a familiar decodable book. Fluency grows through accurate, meaningful practice, not pressure to beat a timer.

The National Curriculum in England includes blending, common exception words, words with endings, longer words, contractions and rereading suitable books. This collection currently offers selected word-recognition practice. It does not assess the complete Year 1 word-reading programme.

Curriculum connection

This collection offers selected practice connected to Year 1 reading. It does not cover the complete programme of study. Read the official English programme of study.

Questions families ask

Is this the same as a phonics screening check?

No. This is a small untimed practice activity with real words. It does not reproduce or score the statutory screening check.

Why are the words spoken as whole words?

The saved marin recordings provide a whole-word prompt. A grown-up should model individual pure sounds using the school’s phonics approach; these clips are not an isolated-phoneme bank.