Some common words are irregular or ‘tricky’, that is, they cannot easily be sounded out. The children quickly understand that the ‘tricky’ words are those which they must remember by sight as a ‘whole’. We tell the children to ‘take a picture’ in their minds of the word, so that they will remember it the next time they see it. We reinforce ‘tricky’ words every day.
Please support your child to recognise these ‘tricky’ words regularly in order to develop rapid recall skills. Your child needs to build up a secure sight vocabulary of these words as they are words which occur often, whenever they are reading or writing. There are 36 tricky words covered over the Reception year: