19 January 2024

Thursday 18 January 2024

This week, the children need to learn five tricky words and the remaining days of the week. Every day, we rehearse the spellings for the week and put them into full sentences. Try this at home.

Phase 5 tricky words: Year 1

Information for parents and carers
‘Tricky words’ are words that cannot easily be decoded (‘sounded out’ and read). This is because some of the sounds in the words are spelled in an unusual way. It is important for children to be able to read these words as they are among the most common words in English.

Below, is a table that shows the tricky words that your child have been learning in Phase 5 in Year 1 and explains why each word is tricky.
Children will practise the tricky words in school until they can read them automatically. They will also practise reading the tricky words in the decodable books that they bring home.
Taught in Year 1 
Tricky word        Tricky part             Why is it tricky?
their                             eir                         The ‘eir’ makes the sound air.
people                         eo                          The ‘eo’ makes the sound ee.
oh                                 oh                          The ‘oh’ makes the sound oa.
your                            our                          The our makes the sound or.
could
would
should                        oul                          Your child has not yet learned the                                                                                         trigraph ‘oul’, which makes the sound                                                                               oo    (as in ‘book’).
our                               our                         The trigraph ‘our’ makes the sound ow                                                                             followed by the schwa sound.
house
mouse                         se                             Your child has not yet learned the                                                                                        digraph ‘se’. Here, it makes the sound s.
water                            a                              The ‘a’ makes the sound or. Learning so                                                                             far: For ‘a’, your child has learned the                                                                               sound a as in ‘cat’.
want                           a                                 The ‘a’ makes the sound o. Learning so                                                                             far: For ‘a’, your child has learned the                                                                               sound a as in ‘cat’.