Home Page

Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar (SPAG)

What is SPAG and why is it so important?

SPAG is featured in the reading comprehension part of the English curriculum. Children need to recognise lots of words and punctuation in sentences to make sense of what they are reading. Using incorrect punctuation, grammar and spelling can change the meaning of sentences whether spoken or written.


SPAG also helps when writing independently, as children become more fluent and write faster when they can spell accurately and make links between sounds in words because they find writing easier. However, their handwriting can suffer when writing longer pieces, so we practise using the correct letter formation.


This year we have done lots of work on developing the children’s SPAG skills in school and on-line. There are still a few weeks until the end of the school year so we thought this would be a good time to summarise the skills we have learnt in preparation for Year 2


  • Use capital letters for the names of people, places, days of the week and personal pronoun ‘I’.
  • Can remember to punctuate sentences with a capital letter, full stop, question mark or exclamation mark when writing longer pieces of work.

  • Can write sentences using ‘and’.
  • Can write simple sentences dictated by an adult, correctly spelling lots of familiar words (including words using phase 5 phonics and the Year 1 common exception word list).

  • Can spell the days of the week.

  • Can recognise words that have prefixes (un) and suffixes (er, est, ed, ing). Can add a prefix or suffix to a root word (which doesn't change the spelling of the root word).

  • Know if you add ‘s or es’ when making a noun a plural (when the root word doesn't change).
  • Know which letters belong to the 4 different handwriting families and use this to practise the correct letter and number formation, including writing capital letters.
  • Can read words that are contractions and know what the apostrophe stands for.

  • Can read compound words and knows what a compound word is.


Below are some optional activities if you want to double check your child's progress against these skills. 

Don't worry if your child didn't get everything right!

We have provided some optional activities (based on our class work and the on-line work) if you feel your child needs further practise in any area.

And finally… for those children who have completed the Year 1 work and would like something else for the next few weeks...