Year 1 Common Exception Words Set 1

Ask a Year 1 child to sound out the word SAID and watch what happens — most will write SED, because phonics tells them to. These fifteen words are the ones that don’t play by the rules.

Common exception words — often called tricky words — are part of the DfE statutory requirements for Year 1, and they appear constantly in everything a five- or six-year-old reads. They can’t be decoded reliably with phonics alone, so they have to become familiar by sight. (If you are reading from the US: these are the British close cousins of sight words, and the activities below work just as well for either list.) This word search brings all fifteen Set 1 words together in one printable puzzle — a calm, low-pressure way for children to look closely at each word’s shape.

THE · DO · TO · TODAY · OF · SAID · SAYS · ARE · WERE · WAS · IS · HIS · HAS · YOU · YOUR

Why these words are tricky

Common exception words aren’t random — each one catches children out for a specific reason. Most of the time phonics works beautifully, and children should absolutely use it. But a small set of very high-frequency words contains patterns they haven’t been taught yet, or that simply don’t match their sound. These fifteen are among the most common words in the English language, which is exactly why getting them secure early matters so much.

THE and OF show the hidden complexity. THE uses a TH sound phonics teaches correctly, but its E is neither long nor clearly short. OF is stranger still: say it naturally and the F sounds like a V. WAS catches out almost every child at some point, because the A is making an O sound. SAID looks like it should rhyme with PAID; it doesn’t. None of this is the child’s fault — they are doing exactly what they were taught. It just means these words need a different approach: look, say, cover, write, check, plus the kind of repeated, friendly exposure a puzzle provides.

Five Set 1 words worth talking about

1. SAID doesn’t rhyme with PAID. Write both words side by side and ask your child to read them. The surprise on their face when SAID refuses to rhyme is the teaching moment — name it directly: “this one breaks the rule, so we just have to know it.”
2. YOU and YOUR share the same tricky bit. Ask children to find both in the grid, then circle the OU in each. Same letters, same “oo” sound, two words for the price of one.
3. WAS has an A that says O. Tell children plainly: “the A is lying — it says O.” Then ask them to say WAS the way it’s spelled (“wass”). The silliness of the wrong version is what makes the right one stick.
4. ARE has a silent E. Cover the E with a finger and ask what’s left. Children can hear that AR already says the whole word — so the E is just along for the ride, and it still has to be written.
5. IS, HIS and HAS all end in an S that says Z. Say all three aloud together — izz, hizz, hazz — and ask children what they notice. Hearing the buzz makes sense of why some children write IZ.

Three ways to use this puzzle

As a look-say-cover-write-check warm-up. Before handing out the grid, run three words (SAID, WAS, YOU) through the classic routine on whiteboards. Then let the word search act as the reward lap — children meet the same words again immediately, this time as things to hunt rather than things to test.

As a read-and-find pair task. One child reads a word aloud from the list; their partner finds it in the grid; swap after each word. The reader rehearses the tricky pronunciations out loud, the searcher matches sound to exact spelling — both halves of sight-word learning in one game.

One-to-one at home. For parents and home educators, the most powerful follow-up costs nothing: after the puzzle, hunt the same words in tonight’s bedtime book. THE will appear on every page, SAID in every story with dialogue. Spotting “puzzle words” in a real book shows your child that these aren’t worksheet words — they are the words reading is actually made of.

What comes next

• Year 1 Common Exception Words Set 2 — the next fifteen tricky words including THEY, LOVE, WHERE and more
• Year 2 Common Exception Words Set 1 — builds on Year 1 with longer, more complex exception words
• All spelling word searches — the full Series A, B and C collection

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