1. Phonics Screening Test

2. Phonics Screening Test Parent Meeting
21st October 2015
What is phonics?
What is the phonics screening test?
What will the test comprise of?
Example words
How will the test be administered?
What will happen after the test?
How you can help at home.

3. What is Phonics? Way of teaching children to read skilfully.
Children are taught how to recognise phonemes (sounds) that each individual letter makes and identify the sounds that different combinations of letters (graphemes) make eg. ‘oo’, ‘sh’, ‘air’ etc.
Digraph - 2 letters that make 1 sound cow
Trigraph - 3 letters that make 1 sound night
Split digraph - 2 vowels with a consonant in between. Used to be known as the magic e! spine (i_e)
Phonics glossary is included in the parents pack. Designed to explain some of the technical jargon!

4. What is Phonics?
They are then taught how to blend these phonemes together to read the whole word.
Children can then use their phonic knowledge to ‘de-code’ unfamiliar words.
In school children have 15 minutes of daily discreet phonics teaching following the Government’s Letters and Sounds programme.

5. What is the phonics screening test?
A statutory reading test that every Year 1 child in the country will complete in the same week.
It will take place in school during the week beginning 13th June. The check cannot be retaken at any other time so it is essential that your child is in school this week.
The focus of the check is to provide evidence of children’s decoding and blending skills, not to test their vocabulary.
Doesn’t take into account children’s preferred reading styles and children develop at different stages.
Fluent readers alter the phonemes to create ‘real’ words. Eg. strom was being read as storm.
Many children, particularly those that are fluent readers and do not rely on decoding words to read.
We are teaching them to ‘make sense’ of the written word.

6. What will the test comprise of?
The check will consist of reading 40 words and non-words (nonsense words)
The children will be asked to ‘sound out’ a word and blend the sounds together. e.g. s-t-ar-t
Children will be told if the word is a real or ‘nonsense’ word. The nonsense word will be put into context by having a corresponding alien image. The children will be asked to read the alien’s name.
The children MUST sound out the correct phonemes and blend together whichever graphemes form that particular word.
Children need to read 32 out of 40 words correctly to pass.

7. Examples of words
day
snemp
slide
slide
blurst
newt
spron
phone
stroft

8. How will it be administered?
With your child’s own teacher and the Phonics co-ordinator.
In a quiet area of the school.
We are not permitted to indicate to the children at the time whether they have correctly sounded out and/or blended the word.
There is no time limit and the test is designed not to be stressful for the children.
Mrs Jastrzebski & Mrs Ireland will conduct screening checks to alleviate stress on children. Also know our own children.
We are permitted to pause the test and give children a break before returning to the test.

9. How can you help?
Revise the Phase 2, 3 & 5 graphemes at home with your child using the Phonics sound mats.
Practice reading the sample real and nonsense words with your child, encouraging them to ‘sound out’ the word and blend it together.
Help your child to use their phonic knowledge to ‘make up’ pseudo words using single letters, digraphs and trigraphs.
Use online games on to read real and nonsense words.
Mr Thorne- Great fun way of learning!
Parent pack
Phonics glossary
List of useful websites for online interactive games
Practise real and pseudo words
Government information for parents regarding the test
Copy of this presentation
Phonics mats for phase 2, 3 & 5

10. How can you help?
REMEMBER: Phonics is not the only thing needed to become a fluent reader.
Please continue to read with your child each night and encourage them to:
Sound out
Re-read to check it makes sense.
Use pictures for clues.
Ask questions about the book.
And most importantly ENJOY READING!

11. And the results...?
The results of each check will be sent to the Local
Authority. Each Local Authority will then submit the
results to the Department for Education.
We will inform you of whether your child has met the national standard.
Children’s reading develops at different rates and if your child’s scores fails to achieve the national standard, further support will be implemented this year and going into Year 2.
Re-takes of the screening test for these children will take place in Year 2.

12. Any questions?