Year 1 Spelling Words

UK National Curriculum Spelling List

45 essential words for 5-6 year olds

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Letter Formation Confusion

Year 1 children often struggle with forming similar-looking letters correctly (like 'b' and 'd', or 'p' and 'q'). This makes it harder to spell words confidently, even when they know the sounds.

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Common Exception Words

Words like 'said', 'the', and 'are' don't follow phonics rules. Young learners find these frustrating because they can't 'sound them out' like other words they're learning.

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Remembering Tricky Sounds

Graphemes like 'igh' in 'night' or 'ou' in 'out' are hard for 5-6 year olds to remember. They know the sounds but forget which letter combinations make them.

Complete Year 1 Word List

a
are
ask
be
by
come
do
friend
full
go
has
he
here
his
house
I
is
love
me
my
no
of
once
one
our
pull
push
put
said
says
school
she
so
some
the
there
they
to
today
was
we
were
where
you
your

About Year 1 Spelling

Year 1 is when children (ages 5-6) begin their formal spelling journey in the UK National Curriculum. At this stage, children are learning to match sounds (phonemes) to letters (graphemes) and beginning to recognize common exception words that don't follow regular phonics patterns.

The focus in Year 1 is on building confidence with simple consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words, as well as memorizing high-frequency words that appear often in children's reading and writing. Many of these words are tricky because they don't follow standard phonics rules.

Our memory tricks and multi-sensory approach help Year 1 children remember these challenging spellings through stories, images, and engaging activities - making spelling practice feel less like work and more like play.