Y1 children: what are they up to, academically?

[Criteria16]

Genuinely curious to know what other children/schools are doing.

My DS is in Y1 and we haven't had a parent's evening yet, so I have only limited information, and none of my friends have children of the same age (they are either much older and they don't remember or younger and no idea).

For instance, how good are your Y1 DC at reading? My DS has recently moved on from spelling out loud all the individual sounds and can now read the whole words (not al of them of course) and most sentences in his book fluently. He can write but still confuses Ds with Bs sometimes, and spelling tests vary from all correct to half correct. If I leave him to write something without my help he would write most words as they are spoken (i.e. yesterday he wrote dadee, instead of daddy).
In math he can count to 1,000, do simple additions and subtractions (i.e. 37 minus 6 makes 31).

How does it compare with the average Y1 children?

Ours can do sums up to 20 and probably some more but not really sure. It sounds like he can do less math than yours from the sound of it. He understands things like doubles and can count in 2s, 5s, and 10s but doesn’t know the times tables.

Reading really took off in reception and he could suddenly read almost anything. For example he would be able to read everything in this post and would have been able to do so before summer term of reception. He is definitely above average in reading though and I think this will level out in time.

Writing is still based on phonics but he has learned to spell more tricky words correctly.

My ds y1 is a little below the average at school. He is reading all his phonic sounds now, so we are slowly moving through the school readers, he still sounds out words quite often but recognition is coming along. I think his school would like him to be moving faster but Reading is his worst skill and he struggles (although he never muddles up letters).

Maths is alright - he knows all his bonds up to ten and can count past a hundred (I’ve no idea if he could get to a thousand, he would be bored long before that!). My eldest dd was similar at this age and now she is top set maths and heading for a 9 at gcse so I’m definitely going to trust the process!

Writing is pretty good, his school have already taught them cursive so he now does joined up writing. I find this a bit bonkers at 5 but they can literally all do it. Spelling is phonetic, which is exactly what school intends at this stage. DS has a speech impediment so we get some really weird spellings based on whatever he has internalised in his own distorted lexicon. He enjoys writing and will write me badly-spelled notes and the shopping list so I can decipher it in Tesco.

I have twins in year 1;

One of them finds reading easier than the other and is between the orange/turquoise book band and reads other childrens books at home happily (superworm, gruffalo ect) - one is finding a bit harder on yellow band and can read a lot of words but needs to sound others out (and isn't as keen on reading)/ still needs help on some phonics rules. Handwriting improving but still a lot of room for improvement but they both write sentences independently which you can usually read with spelling mistakes throughout.

Maths - can add and subtract up to 20 or more, numbers up to 100+, simple multiplication (2x, 10x), one can tell the time, they have been learning about countries and capital cities as well as some other things.

You can find the National curriculum online which will tell you what children are expected to learn in each year.

Maths sounds strong but is he fully understanding or has memorised certain facts?

Reading sounds reasonable but again depends on the level of books he’s reading like this with.

And phonetic spelling completely to be expected at this age, if he’s writing eg dadee then he’s using phase 3 graphemes in his spellings so probably about on track.

Sounds like he’s doing well.

You could get him to do an old y1 phonics screening to give you more of an idea on his reading - test taken in may / June of y1 & pass mark is 32.

It depends hugely on where their birthday is in the year at this stage. Someone who has just turned 6 will be nearly a year ahead of someone just turned 5. My child is early in the year and is a fluent reader, past gold band, but their best friend is much younger and on yellow band. They mostly catch up in the end!

Some of the things on here are well beyond the national curriculum for this point in the year so I don’t think you are going to get a sense of what is average.

My y1 child is getting pretty fluent at reading now and is having a good go at Julia Donaldson books but book bands seem a bit different to my eldest as they’re mainly progressing via the new phonics scheme. They really are focusing a lot more on fluency than I think they did a few years ago.

Maths is interesting as our school focuses on real mastery of the basics at this point so they haven’t gone beyond 10 yet which sounds so basic but they seem to go mega deep within small numbers before moving on. They get some of the best results for in the country for maths by the end of y6 so must be doing something right but it makes for an interesting comparison as I think they do go much slower than some schools at this point.