Phonics has been the dominant approach to teaching reading and spelling in English primary schools since the Rose Review in 2006 and the subsequent introduction of systematic synthetic phonics as the preferred teaching method. The Phonics Screening Check, taken by all Year 1 children in England, is now an established feature of primary assessment. Yet many parents remain unclear about what phonics actually involves, what common exception words are, and how they can support their children at home.
This is a plain-language guide to both.
What is synthetic phonics?
Phonics is the approach to reading and spelling that focuses on the relationship between sounds (phonemes) and the letters or groups of letters that represent them (graphemes). Synthetic phonics teaches children to convert letters into sounds and then blend those sounds together to read words — a process called decoding.
The "synthetic" in synthetic phonics refers to the blending (synthesising) of sounds, not to anything artificial. It is contrasted with analytic phonics, which works from whole words toward their component parts, and whole language approaches, which emphasise meaning and context over decoding.
Systematic synthetic phonics has the strongest evidence base of any approach to early reading instruction. The 2023 EEF (Education Endowment Foundation) review confirmed that high-quality phonics instruction produces around five months of additional progress compared to less systematic approaches.
How phonics is taught in schools
Schools typically follow one of several accredited phonics programmes — Letters and Sounds, Read Write Inc, Jolly Phonics, or Floppy's Phonics are among the most common. These programmes teach grapheme-phoneme correspondences in a structured sequence, from the simplest single-letter sounds (s, a, t, p, i, n) to more complex digraphs and trigraphs (sh, ch, igh, ure).
By the end of Year 1, children following a systematic programme should be able to decode words containing the most common phonics patterns. The Year 1 Phonics Screening Check tests this with 40 words — 20 real words and 20 nonsense words (called "alien words") specifically designed to test decoding ability.
What are common exception words?
Common exception words (sometimes called "tricky words" or "sight words") are high-frequency words that cannot be decoded using the phonics rules a child has learned so far. Words like the, said, have, like, some, come, were, there, their, what, when contain irregular spellings or patterns that children haven't yet been taught.
These words are taught alongside phonics so that children can read and write them even before they've learned the phonics patterns that would explain them. They're called "exception words" because they're exceptions to the phonics patterns the child currently knows — not because they're phonetically irregular per se.
The Year 1 and Year 2 word lists
The National Curriculum specifies two lists of common exception words:
Year 1 words: the, a, do, to, today, of, said, says, are, were, was, is, his, has, I, you, your, they, be, he, she, we, me, no, go, so, by, my, here, there, where, love, come, some, one, once, ask, friend, school, put, push, pull, full, house, our
Year 2 words: door, floor, poor, because, find, kind, mind, behind, child, children, wild, climb, most, only, both, old, cold, gold, hold, told, every, great, break, steak, pretty, beautiful, after, fast, last, past, father, class, grass, pass, plant, path, bath, hour, move, prove, improve, sure, sugar, eye, could, should, would, whole, any, many, again, half, money, Mr, Mrs, people, water, where, love, come, some, once
How to help at home
The best home support aligns with what's happening in school rather than running ahead of it. A few principles:
- Don't teach phonics rules your child hasn't covered yet — this can create confusion if the school programme introduces things in a different order
- Do read with your child every day — reading aloud together, with the child doing the decoding and you providing support without taking over, is the single highest-impact activity
- Practice common exception words little and often — 5 minutes daily is more effective than 30 minutes once a week
- Use the words in context — writing a sentence using a tricky word reinforces it better than just reading it off a card
The Pocket Money Game includes all common exception words in its KS1 spelling levels, with audio support so children can hear as well as see each word. Children who get a word wrong have it added to their Tricky Words list for extra practice.
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