1. Year 1 is a really important year for children- particularly when learning to read. Children learn to read using a range of skills, for example: phonics, sight vocabulary (tricky words), use of pictures, knowledge of stories etc.

2. The phonic Screening test
The Government introduced a phonic screening test for Year 1 children, to test children’s knowledge and to check schools are using a phonic approach.
So what is a phonic approach?

3. Terminology Phoneme Graphemes Segmenting and blending Digraph Trigraph
Graphemes
Segmenting and blending
Digraph
Trigraph
Split digraph
Abbreviations

4. Phase 2 Set 1: s, a, t, p Set 2: i, n, m, d Set 3: g, o, c, k
Set 4: ck, e, u, r
Set 5: h, b, f, ff, l, ll, ss

5. Set 6: j, v, w, x
Set 7: y, z, zz, qu
Consonant digraphs: ch, sh, th, ng
Vowel digraphs: ai, ee, igh, oa, oo, ar, or, ur, ow, oi, ear, air, ure, er

6. Then the children consolidate all the sounds that they have learnt.

7. Phase 3, 4, 5
Children will be taught new graphemes and alternative pronunciations for these graphemes.
Vowel digraphs: wh, ph, ay, ou, ie, ea, oy, ir, ue, aw, ew, oe, au
Split digraphs: a_e, e_e, i_e, o_e, u_e

8. Next steps The focus is on learning spelling rules for suffixes.
-s -es -ing ed
-er -est -y en
-ful -ly -ment -ness

9. Segmenting
Breaking down words for spelling.
cat
c a t

10. Segmenting
Queen qu ee n

11. Building words from phonemes to read.
Blending
Building words from phonemes to read.
c a t
cat

12. Blending
Qu ee n queen

13. What does a Phonics lesson look like?
Revisit/review
Flashcards to practice phonemes learnt so far.
Teach
Teach new phoneme air
Practice
Buried treasure
Air, zair, fair, hair, lair, pair, vair, sair, thair
Apply
Read captions:
The goat had a long beard.
The quack was right in his ear.

14. Resources

15. What does the test look like?
The children work 1-1 with their teacher is a quiet, familiar place.
They have to read 40 words using their ‘blending’ skills.
The words get more tricky as the test goes on.
Some words are real words, some are made up (pseudo words). This is to see if children have learnt their sounds, as some children just learn words off by heart. These ‘made up’ words have a picture of an alien creature on them so the children will know that these are not real words, so they won’t try to make them make sense.

16. Year 1 Phonics Test- real and ‘pseudo’ words