Transcript Phonics Parent Session

Tuesday 17th March 2015

Synthetic phonics is a method of
teaching reading which first teaches the
letter sounds and then builds up to
blending these sounds together to
achieve full pronunciation of whole
words.

Decoding is the ability to apply your
knowledge of letter-sound relationships,
including knowledge of letter patterns, to
correctly pronounce written words.
Understanding these relationships gives
children the ability to recognise familiar
words quickly and to figure out words
they haven't seen before.

Synthetic phonics teaches children to blend
in order to arrive independently at a
pronunciation for a printed word. It is
important that the adult does not
pronounce the word for child because the
point of blending is to allow them to work
the word out themselves. As children
become more competent in blending, they
become more confident in tackling
unfamiliar words using phonics as the prime
approach.
The purpose of the Government check is
to confirm that all pupils have learned
phonic decoding to an age-appropriate
standard.
 Pupils who have not yet reached the
standard will be given phonic
intervention and then given the
opportunity to retake the test
 Individual pupil results will be made
available to parents

The test is carried out 1:1 with the class
teacher.
 The test begins with a practice sheet of 4
real words and 4 pseudo words.
 The test is in 2 parts and includes a list of 40
words, a mixture of pseudo and real words.
 Children will be told the pseudo words are
names for the monster illustrations beside
the word.


There is no time limit for the test.

The screening may be carried out any
time between Monday 15th June until
Friday 26th June.
Children may choose to sound out
phonemes before blending. No
prompting to blend may be given.
 Children’s difficulty in pronunciation must
be taken into account. For example, a
child who has difficulty in saying words
with a th sound and says fw can be
scored correctly.
 Children are allowed to correct incorrect
answers.


This year the government has not given
school’s any indication of the
benchmark. Thus we have no way of
knowing if a child has ‘passed’ the test
until all the data has been sent to the
local authority.
To encourage all schools in England to
implement and maintain a rigorous
phonics programme
 The check should also identify pupils who
need extra support in learning to
decode

By the end of Year 1 children should be able to:
 Give the sound when shown any sound that has been
taught.
 Blend sounds to read words
 Read phonetically decodable one-syllable and twosyllable words
 Apply phonic knowledge and skill as the prime approach
to reading unfamiliar words that are not completely
decodable
 Read many frequently encountered words automatically
 Read phonetically decodable three-syllable words
 Read a range of age-appropriate texts fluently
 Demonstrate an understanding of age-appropriate texts