🚪 Reading Exception Words

What you’ll learn

1. The odd bit, not the whole wordHear that an exception word keeps most of its honest letters, and that the job is to mark the unusual match and where it sits.Water’s a is the stranger. Floor still has f, l, r. Year 2 and Years 3–4 ask you to note the unusual correspondence. Parents is a word you actually meet.
2. Families that share the strangerRead Year 2 exception families by sharing one marked letter team instead of treating each word as a new puzzle.Door, floor, poor share oor. Gold keeps a long-o family. Climb keeps a quiet b. Children sits with child, though it is not itself an exception. Great, break, steak are the only common ea-for-long-a club.
3. The words that stand almost aloneOpen the Year 2 words that barely have a family — people, eye, clothes, beautiful, because, who, whole — by marking the odd stretch.People should already be sitting by the start of Year 2. Eye is three letters for one sound, with no family beside it. Beautiful is long but still has one stranger.
4. Look, mark, then the sentenceLook at every letter, say the sounds you know, mark the odd bit, and put the word back in a real sentence.Sure and sugar share a /sh/ s. Who and whole keep a quiet w. Most children need several meetings. Connected text finishes the storing.
5. Send them back to a pageUse exception words as hinges in real sentences, refuse to guess from a picture, and notice because or Christmas on a familiar page tonight.Because belongs in a sentence. The picture is not a hint. Bath is an exception in some mouths only. Tonight, hunt because. The open question is why some mouths need only one meeting.

Questions this course answers

Grounded in trusted sources

• Department for Education, National curriculum in England: English programmes of study (published 16 July 2014). The term common exception words is used for common words containing unusual GPCs. Year 2 word reading: read further common exception words, noting unusual correspondences between spelling and sound and where these occur in the word; read most words quickly and accurately, without overt sounding and blending, when they have been frequently encountered. By the beginning of Year 2, pupils’ reading of common exception words (for example you, could, many, or people) should be secure so those words can be read easily and automatically. Years 3 and 4: read further exception words, noting the unusual correspondences between spelling and sound, and where these occur in the word. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-curriculum-in-england-english-programmes-of-study/national-curriculum-in-england-english-programmes-of-study
• Department for Education, English Appendix 1: Spelling. Exception words contain GPCs which have not yet been taught as widely applicable, sometimes because they apply in very few age-appropriate words. Pupils’ attention should be drawn to the grapheme-phoneme correspondences that do and do not fit what has been taught so far. Year 2 common exception words (non-statutory examples) include door, floor, poor, because, find, kind, mind, behind, child, children, wild, climb, most, only, both, old, cold, gold, hold, told, every, everybody, even, 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, who, whole, any, many, clothes, busy, people, water, again, half, money, Mr, Mrs, parents, Christmas. Note: children is not an exception to what has been taught so far but is included because of its relationship with child. Some words are exceptions in some accents but not in others — e.g. past, last, fast, path and bath. Great, break and steak are the only common words where the /eɪ/ sound is spelt ea. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7ccc06ed915d63cc65ce61/English_Appendix_1_-_Spelling.pdf
• Department for Education, The reading framework (July 2023; last updated 22 September 2023). Common exception words (sometimes called tricky words) contain GPCs that are unusual or have not yet been taught; they are kept to a minimum in the early stages. Pupils are taught to read and spell these by noting the part that is an exception — in said, s and d are usual, ai for /e/ is not. High-frequency words: pupils should not be asked to learn lists of high-frequency words; they can read most of these by saying the sounds and blending them once the GPCs have been taught. Some pupils store a word after decoding it once; most must decode a word overtly several times in different contexts before they can read it at a glance. Urging pupils to read at speed will not increase fluency. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-reading-framework-teaching-the-foundations-of-literacy
• Common Core State Standards Initiative, English Language Arts, Reading: Foundational Skills. RF.2.3.e: Identify words with inconsistent but common spelling-sound correspondences. RF.2.3.f: Recognize and read grade-appropriate irregularly spelled words. RF.3.3.d: Read grade-appropriate irregularly spelled words. https://www.thecorestandards.org/ELA-Literacy/RF/2/ and https://www.thecorestandards.org/ELA-Literacy/RF/3/
• Linnea C. Ehri, “Development of Sight Word Reading: Phases and Findings,” in The Science of Reading: A Handbook, ed. Margaret J. Snowling and Charles Hulme (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), 135–154. Sight word reading includes all words readers can read from memory. Visuophonological connections — bonding graphemes to phonemes — explain rapid sight-word learning better than remembering a word’s visual outline. https://sites.pitt.edu/~perfetti/PDF/Ehri.pdf
• Institute of Education Sciences, What Works Clearinghouse, Foundational Skills to Support Reading for Understanding in Kindergarten Through 3rd Grade (NCEE 2016-4008, July 2016, revised December 2019), Foorman et al. Recommendation 4: ensure that each student reads connected text every day to support reading accuracy, fluency, and comprehension. Do not encourage guessing unknown words from first letters or pictures. https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/Docs/PracticeGuide/wwc_foundationalreading_040717.pdf

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