Phonics Screening Check

Every year in term 3, year 1 students take part in a simple screening check to see how they’re progressing in phonics; a skill important in learning to read. 📖

The phonics screening check is a short, simple assessment that tells teachers how students are progressing in phonics. It takes only 5–7 minutes and is carried out by classroom teachers with each student individually. Teachers then analyse the results and, if necessary, plan for any additional support that students might require.

At Modbury School P-6, we use the Department for Education's R-2 Phonics Scope and Sequence, which aligns with the range of decodable texts commonly found in South Australian schools. It includes:

reception, year 1 and year 2 phoneme-grapheme (sound-letter) correspondence tables with flexible boundaries between year levels
continual revision of previously taught phoneme-grapheme correspondences
recommended stop and check points to monitor student growth and effectiveness of tier 1 instruction
prompt words, instructional information and word examples for reading and spelling
guidance for teaching morphology

In Years 3-6, we use the Department for Education's Spelling and Morphology Scope and Sequence.

The benefits of Modbury School P-6 implementing a systematic synthetic phonics program ensure that our staff teach single letters, common letter combinations and the sounds they represent in a discrete, systematic and explicit way. Research indicates this is the most effective approach to learning phonics. It supports students to:

understand the relationship between sounds (phonemes), letters (graphemes) and letter combinations
practise segmenting and blending letter-sounds to read and spell words
expand their vocabulary
decode text fluently
use their letter-sound knowledge to write.

We are pleased to announce that 89% of our Year 1 students have achieved or exceeded the Year 1 Phonics Screening Check benchmark. This is a testament to the dedication of our Early Years staff in ensuring rigorous and explicit teaching is in place to support our students' learning and growth.