📚Oxford English Grade 1

Grade 1 English has a quiet trap in it. Reading improves fast and visibly, so writing gets neglected — and then Grade 3 arrives and the child can read a chapter book but cannot produce four coherent sentences. This course deliberately balances the two, with a writing task every fortnight from week one.

The marked-example gallery is the feature parents mention most: for every writing task you can see three real samples at different standards, with the teacher's comments, so you are not guessing whether your child's work is where it should be.

What your child will be able to do

By the end of this course, a learner working at the expected pace will be able to:

• Read aloud fluently at around 60 words per minute
• Spell words using the common vowel digraphs and suffix rules
• Use capital letters, full stops, question marks and exclamation marks
• Identify nouns, verbs and adjectives in a sentence
• Plan and write a short story with a beginning, middle and end

How the course is structured

Oxford English Grade 1 is organised into 6 units covering 150 lessons in total, designed to run across 36 weeks at roughly 4 hours a week. The unit outline below shows 28 representative lessons.

Reading fluency

• Revising all 44 phonemes at speed
• Reading in phrases
• Expression and punctuation cues
• Tackling longer, unfamiliar words
• Reading a whole short chapter book

Spelling patterns

• Adding -s and -es
• Adding -ing and -ed
• Magic e: hop → hope
• Common exception words
• Weekly dictation practice

Grammar foundations

• What makes a sentence
• Nouns and proper nouns
• Verbs: what's happening
• Adjectives that earn their place
• Joining ideas with and, but, because

Handwriting

• Letter families and consistent height
• Joining the first pairs
• Spacing and line placement
• Writing at speed without losing shape

Writing for real reasons

• Labels, lists and captions
• A postcard to a relative
• Instructions: how to make toast
• Retelling a familiar tale
• My own four-sentence story

Comprehension

• Finding the answer in the text
• Inference: how do we know?
• Sequencing events
• Talking about characters

How it is taught

Reading, spelling and writing run as three parallel strands rather than sequential units, so a typical week contains two reading lessons, two spelling lessons and one writing session. Dictation is used weekly because it is the fastest way to turn spelling knowledge into spelling habit.

What is included

• 150 video lessons
• Printable handwriting sheets, dictation lists and 24 writing frames
• 36 quizzes plus three fluency checks
• Marked-example gallery so you know what 'good' looks like

Who this course suits

This course sits in the Grade 1 track and follows a oxford-aligned sequence. It suits families who want a complete, sequenced english year rather than a set of loose practice activities, and it assumes no teaching experience — every lesson includes a short method note for the adult. If your child is comfortably ahead or behind the beginner level described here, use the placement check in lesson one and start at the recommended point instead of lesson one.