Year 1 Common Exception Words Set 3

There’s a quiet moment in Year 1 when a child stops sounding out FRIEND and simply writes it — correctly, without thinking. That moment doesn’t come from a rule. It comes from having seen the word enough times that its shape has become familiar.

This is the third and final set of Year 1 common exception words from the DfE statutory list. It gathers thirteen words children meet constantly in their earliest reading — ONE, ONCE, SCHOOL, HOUSE — words that simply have to be learned by sight. Completing this set means completing the whole Year 1 tricky words list, which is a real milestone whether it happens in a classroom or at a kitchen table. The word search gives children one more gentle encounter with each word, which is exactly what these words need.

COME · SOME · ONE · ONCE · ASK · FRIEND · SCHOOL · PUT · PUSH · PULL · FULL · HOUSE · OUR

Words that have to be learned by sight

What unites this set is that phonics will only take a child so far with each word. COME and SOME look as though the magic E should make the O long — yet the O says a short “u”, and the words rhyme with NUMB, not HOME. ONE and ONCE are stranger still: both begin with a clear “w” sound that has no W anywhere in the spelling. A child sounding out ONE letter by letter arrives at “oh-nee”, which is nothing like the word they actually say.

Then there is the small family of PUT, PUSH, PULL and FULL, where the U says not the short “u” of CUP but the rounded “oo” of FOOT. This trips children up because they have usually just spent weeks securing the short-u sound — and now four common words break it. It is worth being honest with children here: these words are not difficult because the child has done something wrong. English is genuinely inconsistent at this exact spot, and the only reliable way through is repeated, friendly exposure rather than decoding.

Five words worth pausing on

1. FRIEND has a hidden I. It’s the letter children drop, writing FREND. Teach the rescue line out loud together: “a FRIEND is there to the END” — then have them find the word in the grid and circle the I specifically.
2. SCHOOL has a CH that says K. Say CHAIR and SCHOOL back to back and ask your child what the CH is doing differently. Naming the oddity now pays off later — the same Greek CH returns in ECHO and CHEMISTRY.
3. ONE and ONCE start with a sound that isn’t there. Ask children to say “wun” slowly while looking at the letters O-N-E. Where is the W? Nowhere — and the sheer strangeness of that is what makes these words memorable.
4. PUT, PUSH, PULL and FULL are the FOOT-U family. Have children find all four, then say them in a row listening for the shared “oo”. Grouping them as one family turns four exceptions into a single thing to remember.
5. OUR sounds exactly like HOUR. Say both in a sentence — “our hour is up” — and ask which is which. Children meet HOUR formally in Year 2, so noticing the pair now is a quiet head start.

Three gentle ways to use it

As a family sort. On the board, make two columns: “FOOT-U words” and “the rest”. Children sort the thirteen words after completing the grid. The sort takes two minutes, and it leaves the set’s one teachable pattern — PUT, PUSH, PULL, FULL — sitting visibly together.

As a say-it-softly pair task. These are sight words, so the value is in the looking, not the speed. In pairs, children take turns finding a word and whispering it as they circle it. Eye and voice working together is what builds the orthographic memory these words depend on — and a whispering classroom is its own reward.

One-to-one at home. For homeschooling families, finishing this set deserves marking: your child has now met every Year 1 common exception word. Make a small ceremony of it — read the full list aloud together one last time, then let them tick each word off. If a few words are still wobbly, no rush. These words will appear in everything they read from now on; the list was never a test to pass, just an introduction to words they will know for life.

What comes next

• Year 2 Common Exception Words Set 1 — the next stage, with longer words like BECAUSE, CHILDREN and BEHIND
• Year 1 Common Exception Words Set 2 — the previous set with THEY, HERE, THERE, WHERE and more
• All spelling word searches — the full Series A, B and C collection

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