Preparing Students for the Phonics Screening Check

The Year 1 Phonics Screening Check, taking place in June, tests students on their knowledge of the phonics skills they’ve learnt throughout the year to see whether their phonic decoding skills are at an appropriate standard.

As it’s a compulsory test, we feel it’s important that Year 1 teachers have a range of resources to help their students prepare for the check. That’s why we’ve put together a range of activities for you to use on EducationCity. Check them out…

Phonics Screening Check Topic Tool

The Phonics Screening Check Topic Tool is perfect for creating a practical check for real and alien words, and helping students with the learning of phonics. Here’s how:

  • Personalise the test to your needs: you can choose which words to include in the test (CVC, CVCC, etc.) so it’s really easy to personalise it to your class’ needs.
  • Great test preparation: the tool follows the same format as the Phonics Screening Check test, including the use of aliens for identifying pseudo words, and words can be printed out in flashcard format for practice.
  • Identify strengths and weaknesses to help your teaching: you can easily track your students’ progress as the test will pull a list of the words read both correctly and incorrectly for you to have.

Where can I find the Topic Tool?

Check it out! You can either use the Search bar for it on EducationCity or find it in the English module in the following levels:

  • England: Year 1 and 2

Phonics Dictionary Topic Tool

Great for investigating phonemes and graphemes, and reinforcing phonic knowledge to decode words, the Phonics Dictionary makes great phonics practice! Here’s how:

  • Choose a sound from the Phoneme Bank: there are so many sounds to choose from so you can focus on the ones your students are really struggling on.
  • Hear the sounds: you can hear words being sounded out with emphasis on phonemes – great for recall.

Where can I find the Phonics Dictionary?

To see the Phonics Dictionary, use Search or find it in the English module in the following levels:

  • England: Year 1

Phonics Activities

We’ve a whole range of super enjoyable phonics Activities in the English/Literacy modules, that are available via three programmes, those being Letters and Sounds, Jolly Phonics and Read Write.

They can be found in the English/Literacy modules when you select the following levels:

  • England: F2 & Year 1

Check out this list of top 5 phonics Activities to try that we’ve put together with our Lead Producer for English, Heather. Don’t forget you can find them by using the Search bar on EducationCity.

Just log in to access all the resources – for more info, call us on +44 (0)1572 725080.

Can’t access the Phonics Screening Check Topic Tool or the phonics resources because your school doesn’t subscribe to EducationCity? Sign up to a free trial.