Year 1 English articles

Following a reading scheme at school can transform children from non-readers to bookworms in a surprisingly short space of time, but how are they developed and tested to help your child progress?

Understand more about how children learn about sounds and try some of teacher Niki Jackson's practical tips to help your child with their early phonics learning at home. We particularly like the alphabet cookies suggestion...

Fables tell us a story and teach us a lesson at the same time and we've been hearing them, retelling them and writing them for over two thousand years. We explain how primary-school children learn about fables and Aesop in our guide for parents.

Contracted words or contractions are used every day in spoken and written English. Help your child keep them straight with our parents' guide, including complete listings of the common contractions children learn to spell in Year 2 and throughout Key Stage 2.

Expand vocabulary, develop spelling skills, learn about homophones, anagrams and synonyms and compose huge numbers of silly sentences... all while having a great time. Whether your child is 3 or 13, our favourite word board games and literacy card games offer fast-paced fun for the whole family.

Make the most of family outings by choosing one of our parent-recommended museums. For fun, story-telling, literary inspiration and creative opportunities visit the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre.

With a return to greater emphasis on handwriting in primary schools, could a special pen or pencil help your child master the art of neat writing? Handwriting tutor Michelle van Rooyen explains what handwriting pencils and pens are available.

Help your child form each letter of the alphabet correctly with our step-by-step and stroke-by-stroke videos, with experts from the National Handwriting Association. In this video we look at the Zig-zag monster letter family: z, x, v, w, y and k.

Help your child form each letter of the alphabet correctly with our step-by-step and stroke-by-stroke videos, with experts from the National Handwriting Association. Here we look at the Curly caterpillar family: c, a, d, g, q, o, e, s and f.

The letters of the alphabet can be divided into ‘movement groups’, based on the movement made to start writing the letter. Each group has a lead letter (L for Long ladder letters, C for Curly caterpillar letters, R for One-armed robot letters and Z for Zig-zag monster letters) and our handwriting advice video outlines the different letter families and how to practise writing them.

Make sure your child holds their pencil correctly every time they pick it up with this quick trick, as outlined in our video by National Handwriting Association Occupational Paediatric Therapist Catherine Elsey.

Invest in a pair of child-safe scissors and try some of our pre-handwriting activities, as recommended by the National Handwriting Association experts in our video for parents. Who knew cutting and sticking fun could be so educational?

From anti-clockwise circles to letter formation, find out about your child's handwriting journey and how you can support them at home in TheSchoolRun's video, featuring experts from the National handwriting Association.

From eighteen months to five years, TheSchoolRun's handwriting video explains how children's pencil grasp changes over time, how to establish good handwriting habits early on and what to expect in every stage.

Children who hold their pencil or pen in the ideal handwriting position, the dynamic tripod grip, can write comfortably for longer. The National Handwriting Association's Catherine Elsey explains how to help your child establish a confident tripod grip and how it helps avoid hand pain.

Right-handed handwriting tips and advice from the experts, with practical examples of the best way to position paper correctly and hold the pencil with a tripod grasp. Experts from the National Handwriting Association feature in TheSchoolRun's new handwriting video series.

Left-handed handwriting tips and advice from the experts, with practical examples of the best way to position paper correctly and how to hold your wrist in the optimal position for writing. TheSchoolRun's new handwriting videos feature experts from the National Handwriting Association.

Our pick of powerful, informative and evocative novels, anthologies and non-fiction books will help primary-school children understand the facts about the Great War, as well as the everyday lives of the people who lived through it in the trenches and on the Home Front.

With poetry on the new national curriculum for children as young as five, poet Adisa the Verbaliser explains how to make poetry magical for your child.