Year 1 Common Exception Words Set 2

Most of these fifteen words are short — two or three letters. That’s exactly what makes them deceptive. Children assume short words are easy words, and then they write THAY for THEY.

This is the second set of Year 1 common exception words from the DfE statutory list, for children in Year 1 (US kindergarten and first grade families sometimes know these irregular words as “heart words” — words where part has to be learned by heart). After Set 1’s high-frequency puzzlers like SAID and WAS, Set 2 brings the short open-syllable words — HE, ME, WE, GO — alongside the HERE / THERE / WHERE trio that children muddle endlessly. The puzzle pulls all fifteen into one printable grid for focused, low-pressure practice.

THEY · BE · HE · ME · SHE · WE · NO · GO · SO · BY · MY · HERE · THERE · WHERE · LOVE

What’s actually going on in this set

Set 2 splits neatly into three groups, and it helps to teach it that way rather than as one undifferentiated list. The first group is the open-syllable words — BE, HE, ME, SHE, WE, NO, GO, SO. In each, a single vowel at the end of a short word says its own name. This is a genuine spelling rule, not an exception, but Year 1 children haven’t met it formally yet, so to them these words still feel tricky. Pointing out the pattern — “the vowel is at the end, so it says its name” — turns eight separate words into one idea.

The second group is BY and MY, where Y is doing the job of a long I. The third, and the one that causes the most trouble, is HERE, THERE and WHERE. These three look almost identical, and the useful anchor is that all three contain HERE — THERE and WHERE are just HERE with a letter on the front. Then there’s LOVE, the genuine oddball: it looks like it should rhyme with COVE, but the O says a short “u” and the final E is silent.

Five things to point out as they search

1. THEY ends in EY, not AY. Write THAY on a whiteboard and ask your child what’s wrong with it. Correcting a deliberate mistake is more memorable than copying a correct spelling — and THAY is the exact error to head off.
2. HERE is hiding inside THERE and WHERE. Have children find all three in the grid, then cover the first letter of THERE and WHERE with a fingertip. The word HERE appears both times — the single most useful trick for keeping the trio apart.
3. LOVE doesn’t rhyme with COVE. Say GLOVE, DOVE and SHOVE together and ask what they notice. English does this O-before-V trick a lot, and meeting the family makes LOVE feel less like a one-off betrayal.
4. BY and MY have no I — but you can hear one. Ask children where the “I” sound is coming from. The Y is standing in, the same way it will in CRY, FLY and SKY later. Spotting it now is a head start.
5. The short words follow a hidden rule. Say “heeee”, “meeee”, “goooo”, stretching the final vowel, and ask what all these words have in common. A vowel on the end of a short word says its own name — let children discover it rather than telling them.

Three ways to work with this set

As a sorting starter. Before the puzzle, write HERE, THERE and WHERE on three cards. Ask the class: which one means a place near you? Which one asks a question? Which one points somewhere else? Two minutes of meaning-sorting primes children to recognise the words in the grid rather than just matching letter shapes.

As a rhyme hunt in pairs. After the grid is complete, challenge pairs to find the two rhyming families hiding in the word list: HE-ME-SHE-WE-BE, and NO-GO-SO. First pair to sort both families wins. Hearing the shared sounds cements the open-syllable rule without anyone saying the words “open syllable.”

One-to-one at home. If you are teaching your child to read at home, play the stretch game with this set: say each word with the final vowel stretched long — “weeee”, “myyyy” — and have your child find it in the grid before the stretch runs out. It sounds like nonsense; it is actually training them to hear that the vowel is saying its own name, which is the entire lesson of this set in game form.

What comes next

• Year 1 Common Exception Words Set 3 — the final Year 1 set including FRIEND, SCHOOL, HOUSE and more
• Year 1 Common Exception Words Set 1 — the first set with THE, SAID, WAS, YOU and others
• All spelling word searches — the full Series A, B and C collection

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