Reception Key Words

The words below are essential high frequency words which pupils will need, even to tackle very simple texts. These words usually play an important part in holding together the general coherence of texts and early familiarity with them will help pupils get pace and accuracy into their reading at an early stage. Some of these words have irregular or difficult spellings and, because they often play an important grammatical part, they are hard to predict from the surrounding text.

Pupils should be taught to recognise the words in context when sharing reading but the words will also need to be reinforced through other practice and exploration activities so that they can be easily read out of context as well.

By the end of Reception, pupils should be able to read all these words easily, in and out of context.

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