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Primary education

Join our Primary Education forum to discuss starting school and helping your child get the most out of it.

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Original poster

This year's phonics screening

58 replies

Lindy2 · 22/06/2017 12:17

I'm assuming all the children taking this have finished it now. How was the screening this year? Is the threshold level likely to be 32 again?

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Ginmummy1 · 22/06/2017 12:50

Are you asking as a parent or as a teacher? Do you want the views of parents or teachers?

I'm only a parent of a Y1 DD so don't have any insight other than to say that DD said it was fine, and a couple of other parents of Y1 children (at other schools) also said their children had no problems with it.

I'd be interested to know whether there were any particular words that children tended to struggle with - but only because I'm nosy!

Original poster

Lindy2 · 22/06/2017 12:57

I'm a parent and just curious. My 6 year old did it this year and seems to have done ok. She still has a tendency to muddle d and b which might have meant she missed a few marks but I'm happy with her overall reading regardless of the phonics screening. DD1 did it a few years ago and really struggled because she was having problems with reading then.
I guess with the tendency at the moment for tests to be more challenging I was wondering if the phonics screening was also being made harder or whether it is much the same as previous years.

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BubbleGuppie · 22/06/2017 12:59

The teachers don't find out the score till they get the papers back. My mum works in year 1. She said there has been rumors of it going up to 34 but she's not sure but if it did then just over 80% of the year would of got 100% going by the teachers remembering who got 100% :)

The alien words are abit tricky especially as my son is learning them and 'tricky words' trigraphs, digraphs and split digraph words as well as phonics so they used sound buttons on the practise tests to figure out the words. My mum also said the teachers are great at doing the test. One child at a time and they take there time and If they got restless then could finish it abit later :)

mrz · 22/06/2017 17:27

"I'm assuming all the children taking this have finished it now" No it's not finished yet and all materials should be kept secure until Monday.

mrz · 22/06/2017 17:29

"The alien words are abit tricky especially as my son is learning them " why? It's absolutely unnecessary to learn pseudo words very poor practice for teachers to do this.

sirfredfredgeorge · 22/06/2017 17:36

DD said two of the real words she didn't know - which she was surprised about, easy to read of course, but she didn't know the word, so looking forward to the words being published so we can see what they were.

BubbleGuppie How can the teachers not know the scores, it's a simple right/wrong answer that the teachers record? What does getting the papers back mean?

mrz · 22/06/2017 18:05

We've submitted our scores but we don't know the threshold yet

sirfredfredgeorge · 22/06/2017 18:08

Sure mrz I can get that, it was more my confusion with the part
up to 34 but she's not sure but if it did then just over 80% of the year would of got 100%

Since you know if they got 100%, because they got 100%, you don't need to wait for the threshold.

mrz · 22/06/2017 18:30

Agree it doesn't make sense obviously the threshold doesn't matter if they got every word correct

Cherryflamingo · 22/06/2017 20:23

DD got 40 apparently and said it was easy. There's a KS1 page I sometimes look at on FB out of nosiness and a lot of teachers on there said there were 2 words which were tricky. Quite interested to see the list!

Cherryflamingo · 22/06/2017 20:24

Also some discussion on there about the threshold potentially being 34, something to do with different codes even inputting the scores and 33 being different to 34 or something

Cherryflamingo · 22/06/2017 20:25

When not even

BubbleGuppie · 22/06/2017 21:13

I meant the teachers don't know the score as in if its 32 again or not until they get the papers back and are told unlike other tests. Should have said threshold not score.

And mrz you quoted me but only half the sentence my son found a couple of the alien words tricky as hes learning them and trigraphs and all the rest of what I put. I was just saying my son found them abit tricky thats all.

What do you mean its unnecessary to learn pseudo words? The test is 20 alien words and 20 real words isn't it? My sons came home every week with a practise paper 20 real 20 fake, to see how many he knows and they said its so they don't just remember seeing the word but they understand the phonics.

user1955 · 22/06/2017 21:59

We (teachers) don't "get the papers back". They don't go anywhere. The sheets where we record pupil responses, along with the total number of words correct remain in school - still locked in head's filing cabinet. We log the scores and send them off electronically before we know the threshold.

susannahmoodie · 22/06/2017 22:06

I think Mrz's point is there is no point "learning" psuedo words as the whole point in the test is that they decode the words there and then rather than remember the whole word by sight.....so practicing decoding and the sounds is helpful. I just made up new alien words each time.....?? (Ds1 in y1)

FrancesHaHa · 22/06/2017 22:08

Interested question - those of you who are parents, how do you know about all this? Do the schools tell you it's going to take place?

DD told me that she read to someone a few days ago, and she was pulled out of PE to do so - I'm assuming this is the phonics screening, as she rarely reads to anyone at school especially not in PE. She wasn't interested in talking about it further.

susannahmoodie · 22/06/2017 22:10

Yes we were told which week the text would take place in a few weeks before. There was also a parents' session all about the test with support materials given out. I couldn't go cos I was at work but that's a whole other thread.....

susannahmoodie · 22/06/2017 22:10

Test not text!

thebookeatinggirl · 22/06/2017 22:14

You don't need to learn alien 'words'. You need to learn to recognise all the 40+ phonemes, and then sound out and blend them accurately in any order or combination to read any alien word. That's the point of them.

As has been said earlier, teachers carry out and score the screening tests themselves in school. Sometimes we are moderated doing this (every LEA sends moderators to schools randomly to sit in and watch the check being done and make sure teachers are scoring it accurately). Nothing is sent away. We then wait to see what the threshold score is each year to 'pass'. We then work out the percentage of children in the cohort who have scored on or above the threshold score.

sirfredfredgeorge · 22/06/2017 22:24

FrancesHaHa No the school didn't explicitly tell us when it was going to happen, but it's a national thing that happens every year at the same time, so it wasn't a surprise. They certainly let the children know it was going to happen, and they passed on the information. They have also used the phonics screening check methodology previously - in fact DD first did it in reception.

Both the school, and possibly more relevantly us encourage the kids to care about their own education, so the fact that they had a check would be something interesting to talk about.

BubbleGuppie · 22/06/2017 23:04

Ahh okay. I thought they sent the papers off like normal exams, I didn't realise they were just waiting for the overall score of the school. My sons only been at this school since march so maybe they are checking to see what he knew as his old school they were doing cursive writing and that's pretty much it. He didn't even know half the sounds at his old school.

I just got a letter saying 38/40 in his practise test in I think April and since then hes had 40 words to do in a booklet from previous exams and to do sound buttons on and to learn the phonics. then I had a letter saying the real test was the 14/15th june last month. When I've asked his score they just say there's waiting to hear back.

FrancesHaHa · 22/06/2017 23:14

Thanks for the info.

sirfred I was aware that about the phonics screening check, I was just interested in how it was communicated between school and the parents.

I suspect that both my daughters school, and many of the parents I know tend to underplay checks and tests at this age, in order to avoid any pressure on children at this stage. Another example being when I read on here discussions about book bands in reception - this system wasn't used at her school. To be honest I would assume DD didn't discuss it because it wasn't as interesting as other things that happened at school that day.

I don't take this to mean that either the school or myself are not encouraging kids to care about their own education, we just do so in other ways.

mrz · 23/06/2017 05:12

BubbleGuppie my question is why is he learning them?

mrz · 23/06/2017 05:17

"What do you mean its unnecessary to learn pseudo words? The test is 20 alien words and 20 real words isn't it?" The screening check us to see if children can accurately apply phonic knowledge to decode unknown words (the most effective way to ensure words are unknown is to include pseudo words - they've been used for decades by Ed Psychs and Dyslexia screening programmes). Teachers should not be wasting children's time teaching them pseudo words they should be teaching them how to decode do they can read any word they meet in the future.

mrz · 23/06/2017 05:21

The whole point of the check is to identify those children who will require extra input in Y2. Practise tests and learning "alien" words defeats the purpose.

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