St Mark's CE Primary School

Year 2 pupils who did not pass the 2023 screening will take the check in June 2024, alongside year 1 pupils. Please see below helpful resources to support your child to read real and alien words. 

What is the Phonics Screening Check?

The phonics screening check is a quick and easy check of your child's phonic knowledge.  It helps teachers to confirm whether your child has reached the expected standard and to plan next steps for their future learning.

What are 'pseudo words'?

The check will contain a mix of real words and 'non-words' or 'pseudo-words' (or nonsense/alien words).  Children will be told before the check that there will be non-words that he or she will not have seen before.  The children will already be familiar with this through their phonics lessons.  Non-words are important to include because words such as 'vap' or 'jound' are new to all children.  Children cannot read the non-words by using their memory or vocabulary; they have to use their decoding skills.  

1. Break down the sounds of the words by adding sound buttons and digraph/trigraph lines. Developing this skill will help to read the words accurately instead of guessing. 

2. Play hands-on snap, treasure hunt, look-cover-write and word building games 

3. Practise our online games (Children will be screened on Phase 2 - Phase 5 words)

It's important not to pronounce the  'uh' at the end such as 'Tuh' for the sound 'T' or 'Suh' for the sound 'Sss'. This extra 'uh'  is called a 'shwa' and it makes it difficult for children to make the pure sound ready for accurate blending and spelling. Please follow the link below to see how to correctly say all sounds.