English tutoring for Year 1 students (aged 6 and 7), taught to the Victorian Curriculum, with a free Skills Check first, a tutor who knows what Year 1 English actually expects, and a progress note after every session.
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This page is for parents of a Year 1 student who need help with English specifically. Below: what the Victorian Curriculum expect in Year 1, the pressure points of the year, the topics we cover, how a Year 1 English session runs, group versus one-to-one at this age, prices and a typical week. Start with the free Skills Check and a tutor will call you.
Year 1 English is the year decoding has to become automatic so that comprehension can start. The curriculum expects a Year 1 child to know digraphs (sh, ch, th, ee, oa and the rest), to blend longer words, to read decodable and then simple levelled texts with fluency, to spell high-frequency words and to write recounts and simple narratives. Our Year 1 tutors hear the child read every session, teach the next sounds in sequence, and correct spelling at the point of writing.
For a child who did not finish Prep with secure letter sounds, we go back and fix that first, because nothing in Year 1 works without it. For a child who reads well, Year 1 tutoring is about writing: sentence structure, handwriting fluency and the habit of rereading what you wrote. Either way, the phonics check in Term 3 is a useful marker, and we prepare for it by teaching the sounds properly rather than by drilling nonsense words.
Two things make Year 1 a pressure point. The first is the Year 1 Phonics Check, which Victorian government schools now run in Term 3: forty words, real and made-up, read aloud to the teacher, which tells you plainly whether decoding is secure. The second is that Year 1 is when a class spreads out. Some children are reading chapter books by Term 3 while others are still sounding out three-letter words, and a big class cannot give the second group the daily one-to-one reading they need. That is exactly what a Year 1 tutor is for.
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These are the topics our Year 1 English tutors cover, by year level, drawn from the curriculum-aligned question banks that power the free Skills Check.
English is harder to tutor well than maths because the gaps are less visible. A child can read fluently and still not comprehend; a student can write a long essay that never actually answers the question. Our free Skills Check for English looks separately at comprehension, spelling and phonics, grammar and writing, so the tutor knows on day one whether the problem is decoding, understanding, expressing or organising.
In the early years (Prep to Year 2) our focus is systematic phonics and fluency: sound-letter knowledge, blending, high-frequency words and reading aloud with expression. From Year 3 the balance shifts to comprehension and writing: finding evidence in a text, inferring, summarising, and writing paragraphs with a clear topic sentence. By Years 5 and 6 we are working on structured persuasive and narrative writing, the two genres NAPLAN assesses, and on the vocabulary and sentence variety that separate a good piece from an average one.
In secondary English the Victorian Curriculum expects students to analyse how authors construct meaning and how writers build an argument. That is a big jump from primary, and many Year 7 and 8 students we meet are still retelling the plot rather than analysing it. Our tutors teach a simple, explicit structure for analytical paragraphs (point, evidence, explanation of the author's technique, link back to the question), then practise it on the actual texts the school has set. Persuasive writing gets the same treatment: contention, arguments, evidence, rebuttal and language techniques.
Sessions are built around writing, not just talking about writing. A typical hour includes a short comprehension or vocabulary task, a focused teaching point (for example, embedding quotations, or using a semicolon correctly), a piece of writing done in the session, and immediate marking against the criteria a teacher would use. Students keep a running list of their own recurring errors, which shrinks over the term.
For students who speak another language at home, or who read well below their year level, we slow down and go back to the mechanics: sentence structure, tense, articles and prepositions, and lots of guided reading. For strong students we extend into scholarship-style writing and Year 10 texts that lead into VCE. Whichever end your child is at, you get a progress note after every session with a specific next step.
Year 1 sessions are an hour, one-to-one, and always start with the child reading aloud for five to ten minutes while the tutor listens and notes errors. Then a phonics teaching point and practice, ten minutes of writing, and the second half on number: a quick facts game, then the week's concept with materials, then a few written problems. The tutor keeps a running record of sounds and number facts that are secure and sends you a note after each session with one thing to practise.
One-to-one, in person, is our recommendation for Year 1, for the same reason as Prep: the child needs to read aloud to an adult who is listening. Online works for some Year 1 children with a parent alongside, particularly for maths, and we will tell you after the Skills Check whether we think it will suit your child. Small groups are better left until Year 3.
For Year 1 we recommend one-to-one at $35 an hour; small groups (from $25 an hour) are available from Year 3. Across all year levels, small groups are from $25 an hour and one-to-one is $35 to $45 an hour, with VCE at the top of the range. Plans are monthly, you choose how many sessions a week, and you can cancel any time. The Skills Check and the consultation are free. Online and in-person sessions cost the same.
Here is what a typical week looks like for a Year 1 student doing English with us alongside school; most families run one session a week per subject, two in the term before a test or exam.
Before or alongside tutoring, your child can try our free online practice quizzes for Year 1, built from the same curriculum-aligned question banks as the Skills Check. They are short, marked instantly, and a good way to see which topics need work.
Usually yes, provided the tutor teaches phonics systematically and hears the child read every session. Most Year 1 reading gaps are decoding gaps, and they close in a term or two with daily short practice. The free Skills Check will show whether the gap is decoding, sight words or comprehension.
It is a short check run in Term 3 in Victorian government schools: the child reads forty words, some real and some made-up, to the teacher. You do not need to prepare for it as a test; you need to make sure the child knows the sounds. That is what our Year 1 English tutoring does.
Some do. A child who is still counting from one for every sum, or who cannot say what 34 is made of, will struggle with Year 2 regrouping. Fixing number facts and place value in Year 1 takes a few weeks; fixing them in Year 4 takes a term.
Very. Reading and writing are related but separate skills, and writing has to be taught explicitly: how to plan, how to structure a paragraph, how to vary sentences, how to edit. Most of our English work with strong readers is on writing.
Yes. Bring the text and the essay topic and the tutor will work on that. We deliberately practise analysis on the school's set text so the improvement shows up in the next assessment.
Both. Primary sessions include spelling patterns, phonics and grammar every week. Secondary sessions include grammar and punctuation in context: we mark the student's own writing and teach the rule where the error shows up.
Start the free Year 1 English Skills Check → Book a free consultation Call 03 9509 3293
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