Recite the alphabet and its sounds every morning and practice reciting and reading the high frequency words.

Writing: Discuss the learning experience and brainstorm things that happened e.g some topics could be baking, a family visit, school trip . Write down key words which may help the child to write their story. Encouraging them to draw a picture & discussing what they have drawn is another way to help them plan their story.

Get the child to say their first sentence out loud e.g What was the first thing that happened?

Use the alphabet card to write the first sentence for example if the first sentence is "I went to the zoo". You will prompt by saying "where is the word 'I' in the blue box? Can you point to it for me? Great, now write 'I' in your book". Continue this process until you get to a tricky word in the sentence such as 'zoo'. You will then ask the child to sound out the word by identifying the dominant sounds (side note: it is not necessary to write down every sound, particularly silent letters at this stage). The student will say the letter (or you may need to prompt by making the sound). Teacher says "What sound can you hear at the beginning of Zoo? Student responds "ZZZZZ". Teacher says: Great, where is the letter 'z'? Can you point to it for me? Now write the letter in your book".

Repeat this process as they continue to write. Overtime they will require less support

Once students are versed on using the Year 1 alphabet card and are confident with all the alphabet letters, sounds and basic sight words they can move onto using their first dictionary card (seen to the left of the screen).

Writing: Continue to discuss significant learning experiences and get students to use a picture plan. Write and try to orally feed in words which may build on their current vocabulary. Please see the suggestions below where they should be in terms of their sentence progressions at this level