Hello. Next term is the time of year when we check our children's progress using a phonics screening.

The purpose of the screening is to identify any children that may need a bit of extra support, to ensure they develop into happy and confident readers.

I have sent a past paper home if any children would like to practice over half-term. Here's a video from last year explaining the best way to practice.

Dots and dashes

When practising, we encourage to children to first underline the 'special' friends' (sounds made up of two or more letters) and dot the single letter sounds. Children are allowed to do this during their screening and we find that it helps them to blend all the sounds. I will send out a practice paper this week. If you want more papers, you can find them on gov.uk

Here is a step by step guide for doing this at home.

Step 1 - Ask your child to look at the word. Are there any special friends? If yes, ask them to underline the special friends

Step 2 - Now put a dot under the single letter sounds

Step 3 - Ask your child to say each sound and then say the full word

Some words may have more than one 'special friend'. 

A huge thank you to everyone for all your support with reading at home. It is lovely to see more children earning their reading awards and making progress.