Embedding Knowledge in KS1 Literacy

In this article our Key Stage 1 expert, Gemma Spence, shares her ideas for embedding deep literacy learning in KS1.

Imparting knowledge to the children in our classes is one of the central roles of being a primary school teacher. There is huge breadth in what we want our children to know spanning from numerical facts such as 7x5, through recalling historical information such as the year of The Great Fire of London, to remembering geographical information such as knowing the capital city of Spain. Putting knowledge at the core of the curriculum is a key area of development in most schools at the moment; after all, knowledge is power. Consequently, the presence of Knowledge Organisers, Knowledge Quizzes and staff training on Retrieval Practice can be felt all around us.

But what about key knowledge in primary English? What knowledge is required to be successful in primary English and what can we do in our classrooms to support this in engaging and memorable ways?

Here are our Top 10 Tried and Tested Tips for Embedding Knowledge in Literacy within Key Stage 1:

Simple Sentences

Give the children words on pieces of paper and ask them to arrange them to make a sentence. Give the children a partner to work with to encourage discussion and support. This activity provides the children with an opportunity to use their reading and comprehension skills to recall the features of a grammatically correct sentence. Don’t forget to remind children to add the missing capital letter and full stop – some knowledge take a long time to embed!

Sentence Doctor

This a hugely effective lesson opener to encourage children to retrieve and apply their knowledge of the English curriculum. Show children a sentence and ask how it can be improved. The opportunities for this type of activity are endless. It can range from adding missing punctuation, to editing vocabulary choices. There is no learning ‘ceiling’ on this activity as the children can challenge themselves to improve the sentence in as many ways as they are able to.

Sorting Sentences

Provide the children with examples of the four different sentences types (command, statement, exclamation and question) and ask them to sort the sentences into the four different categories. This can be done with a partner or in a small group. Encourage the children to explain their choices to embed their key sentence knowledge and understanding further.

Word Sort

Children need to know a range of grammatical terms for words by the end of Key Stage 1 (e.g. verb, noun, adjective, adverb, time adverbial etc). Provide the children with a selection or words and ask them to sort them. They can physically move word types into groups, or colour code, for example, circling all the nouns in red, the verbs in green… etc.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s a proper noun!

This is a simple flashcard activity to embed the difference between common nouns and proper nouns. Provide children with their own double-sided flashcard, with ‘noun’ written on one side and ‘proper noun’ on the other. Show children flashcards of nouns and proper nouns and children hold up their answer to identify which is which. This is a good assessment for learning opportunity to identify those children who are unsure and would benefit from some targeted teaching from the teacher or teaching assistant. This is also a good opportunity to reinforce that proper nouns need to be capitalised.

Synonym Snowballs

This is a fun activity which will engage all children. Show the children an adjective. Ask children write a synonym on a piece of paper, scrunch it up into a snowball and throw it onto the carpet area or other agreed space in the classroom. After the activity, use a few of the children’s examples to make a synonym snowball display to encourage a wider range of vocabulary.

Picture Perfect

This is another simple activity to encourage the use of vocabulary knowledge. Show the children an image and ask them to record vocabulary to describe it. Challenge the children to use a variety of different grammatical categories e.g. adjectives, similes, verbs. To further embed the different categories of vocabulary used, ask the children to record their ideas in different colours, for example, adjectives in red, similes in blue… etc. As an alternative, make groups of children within the class (adjectives, similes, verbs etc.). These groups have to move around the classroom to record their own grammatical categories to support the image (e.g. the ‘verbs’ group would record words like creeping, blowing, lapping etc.).

Past or Present?

Once children have learnt the suffix spelling rules for the past and present tenses, this activity is a simple one to set up to allow them to practise. Give the children a sentence written in the present tense and ask them to change it to past tense and vice versa. This activity allows the children to apply spelling and grammar knowledge including those tricky rules for dropping, doubling, changing a y to i, or leaving the root word the same.

Where’s your apostrophe?

Using apostrophes for contraction is a difficult concept for children in Year 2 to understand. Once the children have been taught this concept, use the following activity to embed their knowledge further. Show the children the words in their expanded form and ask them to contract them, for example, do not will become don’t. This is an ideal activity to have set up as the children come into the classroom in the morning or after lunch with the words prepared on the whiteboard for children to complete as they settle ready for lessons.

Quiz it!

In order to identify the gaps in children’s knowledge, low stakes quizzes are ideal. They highlight the strengths and gaps to aid future teaching and allow children to practise retrieving essential knowledge from their long-term memories. For our Year 2 Quick Grammar Quizzes, click below.

We hope you find these short activities useful and that the children in your class have fun with them whilst deepening their English knowledge.

Gemma Spence