Y1 phonics screening test.

[FreeSpirit89]

I went to a meeting today about the phonics screen test for year one pupils. Forty questions 20 real words and 20 alien (fake) ones.

The children are then marked, and as far as I understand it doesn't matter about there grades. The test isn't to find out there levels because, the teachers know that without the test.

It's for government statistics as far as I can tell.

Can anyone shed any light into why the children are taking it?
Why do the government seem determined to destroy children as young as possible with pointless tests?

AIBU to think that it's too much, too young?

That doesn't matter. Any known pronunciation of a letter/spelling is acceptable and will be marked correct. So in the case of 'ro' either pronunciation is fine.

so there was some fairly vocal objection to the inclusion of non-words in the screening check. I also know several parents who have been told that their child is likely to fail the check but not to worry because they were fluent readers that have moved beyond phonics. Usually followed by some sort of criticism of the government and how the non-words were the issue.

Several of the unions and the UKLA also carried out surveys of teachers attitudes to the check. The UKLA are not the most unbiased of associations, but this does not make good reading.

Hopefully we've moved on a bit since then, but I stand by my point that some teachers still don't understand the purpose of non-words and a non-word reading check enough to explain it clearly to parents. If they did, I'm not sure the OP would have started this thread.

Some kids (especially very bright ones) have good memories and vocabularies and are good at working things out from context. Sometimes they can look like they are "reading" that book whereas in reality they are just guessing and memorizing their way through.

If this isn't spotted in time, sometimes these kids can go on and on in this way for quite some time. Eventually their lack of reading will become obvious, but by this time, trying to get them caught up with their peers can be a big hassle.

The screening test is an attempt to screen out these kids EARLY, so that they can be given early extra phonics work to sort the problem out. Fake words are used to make sure that kids are not just guessing etc. Being able to work out the likely pronunciation of an unknown word is a useful skill in any case because kids come across unknown words all the time in books.

It is quite a small "test" and the kids mostly don't find it stressful. I think they are told that the fake words are "alien names" or something.