Grade 1English Language

What your child actually learns this year

Every strand and every topic in the Grade 1 English Language curriculum, exactly as the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development sets it out. Written so you can read it in one sitting, without a teaching qualification.

1Listening and SpeakingOne topic carrying the largest share of the year's questions: hearing sounds correctly and saying them back, which is where reading actually starts.1 topic·116 questions

  • Pronunciation and Vocabulary

    46 skills
2ReadingFrom pre-reading to comprehension in one year: sounds, then words, then reading smoothly, then understanding what was read.4 topics·64 questions

  • Pre-reading

    10 skills

  • Word Reading

    4 skills

  • Fluency

    13 skills

  • Comprehension

    9 skills
3Language UseFifteen topics and the busiest strand: the verbs to be, to do and to have, plurals, the present and past tense, nouns, prepositions, adjectives and the first questions.15 topics·60 questions

  • Verb 'to be' - Present Tense

    2 skills

  • Verbs 'to do' - Present form; Subjective Pronouns - Singular

    2 skills

  • Verb 'to have' - present form; Objective Pronouns - Singular

    2 skills

  • Singular and plurals (adding -s and -es)

    2 skills

  • Tense: Present Simple Tense

    2 skills

  • Tense: Present Continuous Tense (Adding -ing)

    2 skills

  • Tense: Simple Past Tense (Adding -ed / -d)

    2 skills

  • Demonstratives: this, that, these and those

    1 skills

  • Nouns: Common and proper nouns

    2 skills

  • Simple prepositions (in, on, under, between, behind, in front, inside, outside)

    2 skills

  • Adjectives (one and two-syllable adjectives)

    2 skills

  • Possessives (my, our, her, his, their, its)

    2 skills

  • Yes/No questions (with can, may, will)

    2 skills

  • Adverbs of Place

    2 skills

  • Interjections of surprise

    2 skills
4WritingHolding the pencil, forming the letters, spelling, the capital letter and the full stop, and finally a few sentences of the child's own.6 topics·60 questions

  • Pre-writing

    5 skills

  • Handwriting

    6 skills

  • Spelling

    6 skills

  • Punctuation (capital letters, small letters and the full stop)

    3 skills

  • Punctuation

    2 skills

  • Guided Writing

    10 skills

Why you can take this page at face value

Straight from the KICD design

The strands and topics on this page are the Grade 1 English Language curriculum as the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development sets it out. We have not chosen them, reordered them or left any out.

Nothing here is a sample

Every topic below is covered in our question bank, not a selection of the easy ones. The numbers beside each strand are the real counts.

Marked by a machine, written by a person

Each question carries its full working and a note on why every wrong answer is wrong, so a child who misses one is told what they were thinking, not just that they were wrong.

See what your child can already do

Twenty questions, free, across any of these topics, with the complete weekly report that tells you which are solid and which are slipping. No card, nothing renews by itself.

Start free — 20 questions 🚀

300 Grade 1 English Language questions in the bank, covering every topic on this page.