CAPS English Home Language Grade 1: What Is Covered?

The four skills CAPS builds

The Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) organises English Home Language into four skill areas that are taught together, not one after the other. These are Listening and Speaking, Phonics, Reading and Viewing, and Writing (including Handwriting). Every week your child does a little of each, which is why a good school day mixes stories, sounds, reading and pencil work.

Roughly the biggest slice of Home Language time goes to reading and phonics, because these are the engine of everything else. Listening and speaking come first though — a child who can hear the difference between sounds and who has a rich spoken vocabulary finds reading much easier.

Listening and speaking come first

Before children read words, CAPS expects them to listen to stories, answer questions about them, follow instructions, and retell events in order. Your child will learn rhymes, songs and 'news telling', where they talk about their weekend or a picture.

This matters more than it looks. Organisations like Wordworks show that a child's spoken language — the words they know and can use — is one of the strongest predictors of later reading. Chatting, singing and telling stories at home is real curriculum work, not just play.

Phonics: sounds in a planned order

Phonics is where reading is built. In Grade 1, CAPS introduces single letter sounds in a sensible sequence (not alphabetically), then short 'consonant-vowel-consonant' words like cat, pin and mud. Children learn to blend sounds together to read a word and to break words apart to spell them.

By the second half of the year, children meet some common two-letter sounds (digraphs) such as 'sh', 'ch' and 'th', and double letters like 'll' and 'ss'. They also learn a set of high-frequency 'sight words' — words like the, was and said that appear everywhere but do not sound out neatly.

If you want to support this at home, teach the pure sound a letter makes (/s/ not 'suh') so sounds blend cleanly. SGEG's free first lessons follow the same CAPS phonics order, so home practice reinforces exactly what the classroom teaches.

Reading and viewing

Reading in Grade 1 moves from words to short, predictable sentences and simple stories. Children read big books and graded readers with the teacher, then start reading short texts more independently. 'Viewing' means making sense of pictures, labels and signs — an early comprehension skill.

Comprehension is expected from the start. Even with a one-line story, your child should be able to say what happened and answer a simple 'who' or 'what' question. Reading for meaning — not just barking at words — is the goal the whole way through.

Writing and handwriting

Writing grows alongside reading. Children learn to form letters correctly, write their own name, copy words, label pictures and, by year end, write a short sentence or two of their own news. Handwriting is taught explicitly, with correct letter formation and sitting on the line.

Spelling in Grade 1 leans on phonics: children spell short words by listening for each sound. Do not expect perfect spelling — 'invented' spelling that shows a child is hearing sounds (like 'wnt' for 'went') is a healthy sign of progress.