Phonics Screening Check

All children in Year 1 are required to take part in the statutory Phonics Screening Check.

The check takes place in June each year and consists of children reading 40 real and pseudo (alien or monster) words. All 40 words are phonically decodable, using grapheme-phoneme correspondences (the letters and how they sound) and decoding skills children have learnt during their daily phonics sessions.

As well as learning new grapheme-phoneme correspondences in Year 1, phonics screening practice is built into daily lessons. Some children will also receive daily ‘keep-up’ to support their progress in preparation for the screening check. All children will also take part in half termly practice checks in the lead up to the testing period.

We teach phonics through a scheme called Little Wandle: Letters and Sounds revised. Little Wandle provide a ‘For Parents’ area on their website which has lots of useful tools for supporting phonics at home. This can be found here.

More information regarding the phonics screening check for parents can be found here.