Year 1 SPaG Spring Term
Year 1 SPaG scheme – Spring Term
Spectacular SPaG is an exciting pick up and go SPaG scheme, using small steps, designed to save you time whilst making SPaG engaging and active.
There are 8 lessons in the Spring block of work, each of which focuses on a small step taken from the DfE’s English Appendix 2: Vocabulary, grammar and punctuation from the national curriculum. Each lesson has a PowerPoint presentation, an activity sheet and a worksheet.
The activity sheets focus more on practical activities and the worksheets apply the skills, often through writing. Each activity and worksheet is differentiated at two levels : less able and more able. The less challenging resources tend to use simpler vocabulary and often include visual prompts and scaffolding.
Each lesson plan also includes ideas for additional or continuous provision activities.
The vocabulary used in the resources in this block is aligned with the spelling curriculum that the children will be covering in Year 1. Sometimes the vocabulary is kept simple to allow the children to focus on the new concept that is being taught.
Dependent on your timetabling and individual needs of your children, you may wish to split each lesson over 2, 3 or more sessions.
Small steps
The following small steps are covered this term:
✅ Combine words to make a sentence
✅ Begin to sequence sentences
✅ Use spaces between words
✅ Start to use capital letters and full stops
✅ Use capital letters for names of people, places and days of the week
✅ Identify and use exclamation marks
✅ Use ‘and’ to join clauses
✅ Adding suffixes -ing, -ed or -er to verbs
In Year 1, children embark on their exciting journey into the world of spelling, punctuation, and grammar (SPaG). At this stage, the focus is on developing core literacy skills, which will provide a solid foundation for their future learning. Here’s what children will explore:
Spelling
Children are introduced to **phonics**—the relationship between sounds and their corresponding letters or groups of letters. Through daily practice, they’ll begin to spell simple words, starting with consonant-vowel-consonant patterns like “dog” and “cat.” They’ll also learn to recognise and spell **common exception words** (sometimes called “tricky words”), such as “the,” “said,” and “was,” which don’t follow regular phonetic rules.
By the end of Year 1, children should be able to:
– Identify and use basic phonemes and graphemes.
– Spell simple CVCC words, as well as more complex words using digraphs (e.g., “sh,” “ch”) and trigraphs (e.g., “igh,” “air”).
– Understand and apply basic suffixes like -s, -es, -ing, and -ed.
Punctuation
In Year 1, children begin to understand how punctuation helps to give meaning to sentences. They will start to:
– Use capital letters at the beginning of sentences and for names.
– Use full stops to end sentences.
– Begin to experiment with **question marks** and **exclamation marks**.
Grammar
Children will develop an understanding of the basic building blocks of sentences. They will learn:
– To write simple sentences with correct word order.
– How to use conjunctions like “and” to join words and phrases.
– To identify and use nouns, verbs, and adjectives in their writing.
– The concept of singular and plural nouns, and how to change word endings to match.
Hands-on Learning
In Year 1, SPaG lessons are lively and interactive. Through practical activities like word games, sorting tasks, and fun writing exercises, children begin to experiment with language in a creative and supportive environment. These experiences encourage them to enjoy spelling and grammar while building confidence in their writing.
Year 1 is all about introducing these essential skills in a fun, accessible way, fostering a love for reading and writing that will last a lifetime.
