1. Year 1 Phonics Screening Check 2018
A Guide for Parents

2. Areas to cover What is phonics? What is the Phonics Screening Check?
What happens during the Check?
What are pseudo words?
How will parents receive the results?
How can parents support their child at home?

3. What is phonics?
Synthetic phonics is the method all primary schools use to teach children how to read and write.
Children are taught to identify individual sounds (phonemes) within words before blending together (synthesising) to say the word.
c a t

4. What is phonics?
Phonics is taught in small groups with sounds being introduced in phases and sets.

5. What is phonics?
Split digraphs are perhaps the trickiest aspect of Phases 2 to 5 for your children to grasp.
During Phase 5, your children are introduced the concept that the some digraphs can be ‘split’ by a vowel. This is sometimes referred to as 'magic e’.

6. What is the Phonics Screening Check?
The Phonics Screening Check is a statutory assessment which will be taken by all Year 1 children throughout the country.
This year’s Phonics Screening Check will take place on week commencing Monday 11th June.
The Phonics Screening Check is designed to confirm whether individual children have learnt sufficient phonic decoding and blending skills to an ‘appropriate standard’.

7. What happens during the Check?
The test contains 40 words.
The list of words is a combination of 20 real words and 20 pseudo words.
Each child will sit one to one and read each word aloud to a teacher.
The test will take approximately 10 minutes per child, although all children are allowed to complete the check at their own pace.

8. What are pseudo words?
Pseudo words are nonsense words, or ‘alien words’.
The pseudo words will be shown to your child with a picture of an alien.
Pseudo words may seem strange, but they are included because they will be new words to all pupils, i.e. they do not favour children with good vocabulary knowledge or visual memory of words.

9. How will parents receive the results?
By the end of the Summer term, all schools must report their results to parents.
We will confirm if your child has met the national ‘threshold’. In recent years, the threshold has been 32 out of 40.
Children who do not achieve the expected level will retake the test in Year 2.
Results are used by schools to analyse their own performance and for Ofsted to use in inspections.

10. How can parents support their child at home?
Play lots of phonics games with your child.
Read as much as possible with your child.
If your child is struggling to decode a word, help them by encouraging them to say each sound in the word from left to right.
Blend the sounds by pointing to each letter.
Real and pseudo words flashcards.

11. Resources
- Practice materials from 2014
- Choose Free Play, Phase 3/Phase 5
- Lots of excellent phonics games suitable for Phase 3/Phase 5

12. Final thoughts...
A mock Phonics Screening Check was completed before Easter and a further mock check will take place before the end of Summer 1. A copy of the marks sheet will be sent home.
If you would like me to send home appropriate materials, please ask and I will tailor to your child.
Any questions?