What phonics sounds is your Year 1 child learning?

[AndiMac]

I'm just curious what phonic sounds your children are learning at the start of the school year. We've been given homework sounds to practice with them over the course of a week, 2 words per sound. Last week it was "ay" as in pay and "ee" as in need. This week it's "igh" as in sight and "ow" as in snow.

I just feel that "igh" is a pretty difficult sound to be learning to read and spell this early in the school year, especially since the "ing" sound is still relatively new from reception. My daughter has "lighter" and "snowing" as two of her four words and the similarities of the letters is getting her confused.

I was looking on the BBC website and it says that "igh" is taught 3rd term in Year 1. While I understand it doesn't have to be taught exactly to that schedule, the first month of school seems to be perhaps early. Or do others have the same sort of difficult sounds and I'm completely off-base?

DS had an 'igh' homework last week (yr 1). He also had a couple of phonics homework tasks with igh last year in Reception. To be honest, it is not a sound that he has found difficult to learn to read as it is almost always pronounced in the same way (apart from in 'eigh' words). It's not as confusing for him as 'ear'.

I'm not sure if this is normal or not. He is in the 'core' phonics group at school - he is not G&T and doesn't need extra support.

Ds1 did it in reception. I don't have a clue what sounds he is doing in year 1 so far! I think they didn most things in reception and will reinforce in year 1. Might have done things like "tion" this year but not sure, he knows the sound but I can't tell you if he knows it for this year or last.

Those sounds were done in reception at the beginning of the summer term IIRC, can't say I know what sounds he's working on specifically now as we don't get phonics sent home to practice this year.

DS1 did 'igh' in reception, I think they covered all the basic sounds in YR actually.

Okay, thanks for the feedback. Guess DD will just have to knuckle down and learn it!

My dd's school differentiated for 'special phonics' around half-term in YR and in addition to the daily class work, they divided into groups and were working at different paces.

Some of the children definitely covered these sounds in YR, some are probably doing these now and it's very likely that some children haven't been taught them yet in Y1.

The good thing about igh is that it has a regular pronunciation, but not many common words have just the igh spelling. Here they are, in case u want to practise a little more:
blight
bright
delight
fight
flight
fright, frighten
high
knight
light
lightning
alight
might
mighty
nigh
night, tonight
right
sigh
sight
slight
thigh
tight.
Masha Bell

Thanks for the list. It's not so much the reading it, it's having to produce it by writing it that is an issue.

BBC has a load of good flash games for different sounds and also exercise sheets, which made it slightly more interesting this morning, but still lots of moaning to do it.

It depends on the programme the school uses. Some programmes teach "igh" as the first way of spelling the "ie" sound and will have done it in reception. Usually in Y1, they start introducing alternative ways of spelling the different phonemes. "ing" is not a phoneme - it indicates the present continuous of a verb, the children should have learnt "i" and "ng".

Yes, the gerund form. I was just trying to keep it simple, referring to the sound and the spelling, rather than the point of grammar. But interesting to know different schools use different programmes. I certainly know within our village, never mind the borough, they have different practices for learning handwriting.

My Y1 class have been learning one letter 2 sounds (o as in got and go) and have just moved onto different ways to write the /ay/ sound (ay, ai, a_e, ey, ea).