The Year 1 Phonics Screening Check
Why and When? It is a statutory requirement for all schools to carry out the screening check for Year 1 pupils. The check is normally carried out during the second week of June.
The Year 1 phonics screening check is designed to be a short, assessment to confirm whether individual pupils have learnt phonic decoding to an appropriate standard. The check was first introduced in 2012.
It will identify the children who need extra help so that they can be given support by their school to improve their reading skills. They will then be re-checked in the Autumn term of Year 2.
How? The check will take place on a one to one basis with the child's own class teacher. The children will read a mixture of 40 real and nonsense words on flash cards. The nonsense words will be identified by an alien on the card. The test will be made up of 2 sections; the first with a variety of simple word structures, and the second with more complex word structures. The test will take between four and nine minutes.
The threshold mark in previous years was 32 out of 40 words. You will be informed of whether or not your child met the threshold on their annual school report.
A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in a word A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in a word. A grapheme is a symbol of a phoneme, that is, a letter or group of letters representing a sound. Blending consists of building the phonemes to read words.
A digraph is a two-letter grapheme where two letters represent one sound such as ‘ea’ in seat and ‘sh’ in ship. A trigraph is a three-letter grapheme where three letters represent one phoneme such as ‘air’ in hair, and ‘igh’ in night.
A split digraph is a two letter grapheme where the two letters are split up but represent one sound such as a_e in name and i_e in fine. This was described as magic e or silent e but these terms are no longer used.
Sample Words Check Section 1 tox bim chom gang quemp start best
Section 2 terg stroft phone slide scribe dentist blurst Sample Words Check Section 2 terg stroft phone slide scribe dentist blurst
What is happening in school? A daily 25 minute phonic lesson. Streamed phonic groups. A large amount of money has been invested in new phonic reading books. Targeted intervention activities in all classes.
How can you help? Read daily with your child, actively encourage their blending skills. Practise recognising digraphs & trigraphs. Play reading and phonic games with your child. Check book bags for a new phonic letter each half term. This explains what phonemes and words your child will currently be learning in phonics.
How can you help?