The phonics screening check is taken individually by all children in Year 1 in England, and is usually taken in June. It is designed to give teachers and parents information on how your child is progressing in phonics. It will help to identify whether your child needs additional support at this stage so that they do not fall behind in this vital early reading skill.

It checks that your child can:

• Sound out and blend graphemes in order to read simple words.
• Read phonically decodable one-syllable and two-syllable words, e.g. cat, sand, windmill.
• Read a selection of nonsense words which are referred to as pseudo words.
• Pseudo words are included in the check specifically to assess whether your child can decode a word using phonics skills and not their memory.
• They will need to score at least 32 out of 40 to pass.

More information about the Phonics Screening Check can be found here:

Year 1 Phonics Screening Check Information for Parents

What can you do?

• Listen to your child practise reading their phonics book to develop their fluency.
• Read to your child – choose books that you can enjoy together. The love of reading books we send home are a great place to start.
• Ask your child’s teacher if you need extra help with supporting your child . The link below will take you to their website where there are videos that demonstrate how to pronounce the different digraphs and trigraphs.

https://www.littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk/resources/for-parents/

Attached are some activities you can complete with your children.

• Phase 3 flashcards
• Phase 3 roll and read
• Phase 3 sound button words
• Phase 5 flashcards
• Phase 5 sounds

Online games:

• https://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/resources/phase/3
• https://www.phonicsbloom.com/uk/game/phonics-frog?phase=3#