Unit 1 — The commonest oddities
The most-used words in English, and none of them plays fair.
Years 1 and 2 (UK)
Common exception words
The words years 1 and 2 are expected to spell that phonics cannot reach. Seven short units, each read aloud, with the one odd letter in each word made visible when it goes wrong.
Years 1 and 2 (UK) 70 words 7 units
Take a unit
Unit 2 — was, one, once
A vowel doing something it does nowhere else.
Unit 3 — me, she, we
Short words where the vowel says its own name.
Unit 4 — where, love, come
The o that sounds like u.
Unit 5 — push, pull, full
The oo sound written with a u.
Unit 6 — whole, people, water
Year 2, and the ones that keep coming back.
Unit 7 — sugar, eye, could
The last of the statutory oddities.
The words
WordSentence read after it
the
Put the milk in the fridge.
a
I ate a pear at lunch.
do
Please do your best work.
to
We walked to the shop together.
today
Today is the last day of term.
of
A glass of water, please.
said
The teacher said to line up.
says
He says the same thing every time.
are
These shoes are too small.
were
They were late for the bus.
Unit 2
was
The film was very long.
is
The soup is too hot.
his
His bike has a flat tire.
has
He has a loose tooth.
I
I am ready to start.
you
You can borrow my ruler.
your
Is this your jacket?
they
They are waiting outside.
be
Try to be quiet in the library.
he
He runs faster than me.
Unit 3
me
Please pass me the glue.
she
She plays the violin.
we
We are going swimming.
no
There is no milk left.
go
We go to the park after school.
so
It was so cold we stayed in.
by
The chair by the window is free.
my
My coat is hanging by the door.
here
Put your bag down here.
there
Your bag is over there by the door.
Unit 4
where
Where did you leave your lunchbox?
love
They love their old dog.
come
Please come to the front of the class.
some
Take some paper from the pile.
one
Only one apple is left.
once
Read it once more before you hand it in.
ask
Ask your teacher for help.
friend
My best friend moved away last year.
school
Our school has a new library.
put
Put the scissors back in the pot.
Unit 5
push
Push the door, do not pull it.
pull
Pull the rope harder.
full
The bucket is full of rain.
house
Their house is on the corner.
our
This is our classroom.
because
I stayed in because it rained.
many
How many chairs do we need?
any
Is there any paper left?
again
Read the sentence again slowly.
who
Who left this jacket behind?
Unit 6
whole
She read the whole book in one afternoon.
people
Twelve people came to the meeting.
water
Fill the bottle with water.
work
Finish your work before break.
word
I could not read one word of it.
world
A map of the world hangs on our wall.
move
Move your chair closer.
prove
You cannot prove it either way.
improve
His writing did improve.
sure
Are you sure about that?
Unit 7
sugar
There is no sugar left in the jar.
eye
A speck of dust got in my eye.
could
I could hear the rain on the roof.
should
You should wear a helmet.
would
I would like another turn.
want
I want to try again.
watch
Watch how I fold the paper.
wild
The garden had gone wild.
children
The children lined up quietly.
climb
They climb the hill every Sunday.
Sheets you can print
Tick what you need. The packet prints in this order, one sheet per page, with nothing else on the paper.
Why these are taught apart from phonics
A child in year 1 has just been told something enormous and mostly true: letters make sounds, and sounds make words. Then they meet said, was and one, and the deal appears to be off. Teaching those words inside a phonics lesson quietly undermines the lesson itself, because the child concludes that the rule does not really hold.
Naming them out loud as the exceptions fixes that. Children cope with an irregular word far better when they have been told it is irregular than when they are left to work out for themselves that spelling is arbitrary. The whole value of this list is that it is a named, finite, closed set of oddities rather than an unwelcome surprise inside a regular lesson.
Most of them are only wrong in one place
Said is s and d exactly where you would expect, with one strange vowel in the middle. Friend is entirely regular apart from the i. Could, should and would share one three-letter oddity between them. Pointing at the single letter that misbehaves turns a whole-word memory task into a one-letter one, which is a far smaller thing to ask.
That is also what the letter-by-letter mark on this site is for. A child who writes frend has got five of six letters right and needs to be shown one letter, not a cross. Seeing the word with the missing i marked is a different experience from being told the answer was wrong.
The pairs worth teaching together
Push, pull and full belong in the same lesson: the same oo sound written with a u, three words a child meets daily. Where, there and here look like a family and behave like one, which makes them unusually cooperative for words on this list.
Their opposites are the ones to keep apart. Was and saw are the classic confusion, and teaching them in the same week reliably produces a child who writes both at random for a month. Separate them, secure each, then contrast them deliberately — the contrast is worth doing, but not first.
What to do when they come back wrong
They will. These are the highest-frequency words in the language, so a child writes them constantly, and a wrong spelling gets a great deal of practice before anybody notices. Expect them to reappear in writing long after the weekly test was passed.
The remedy is circulation rather than repetition. Three of these dropped into every later test, all year, costs about a minute a week and heads off the slow drift back to sed and wos that turns up in every second-year class.
Common questions
Are these the same as sight words?
Nearly. Common exception words is the English national curriculum term; Dolch and Fry are American lists built the same way, and the overlap is heavy.
Should a child sound these out anyway?
Sound out the part that works and learn the odd letter as an exception. Sounding out the whole of one teaches the wrong lesson.
How many a week?
Five to ten at this age. They are short, and the difficulty is memory rather than length.
My child reads these but cannot spell them.
Completely normal. Reading is recognition and spelling is production, and production runs a year or two behind at this age.