Phonemic Awareness

There is no need to use valuable time assessing phonemic awareness. Children become phonemically aware as they learn how to identify sounds in words and write corresponding letters for spelling. Studies show no correlation between phonemic awareness before and after teaching reading through systematic synthetic phonics. If teaching phonics is delayed until children are phonemically aware, it can be harmful for those children who find learning to read more difficult.

Ongoing Formative Phonics Assessment for Beginners

Teachers should continually assess children’s progress in phonics. Within two or three weeks of starting systematic phonics lessons, they will notice which children are struggling to keep up. These children should immediately be given extra help. The aim is to ‘keep up’, not ‘catch up’.

Every child should be assessed regularly, for example every half term, to check which letter-sounds they have learned, so that their teacher knows which ones to work on until they have mastered them. In addition, teachers should be aware of any children who have difficulty blending sounds to read words, or identifying the sounds in spoken words to spell them, or forming letters. These children should be provided with extra help every day.

Informal assessment can take place during class phonics lessons simply by watching, listening and noting those children who are not joining in successfully. More planned assessment can take place in a small group or one-to-one, while other children are occupied working independently, ideally with help from an extra adult.

Teachers should listen to children reading individually, first words and then texts with words with letter-sounds they have learned, so that teachers are aware of any difficulties. This should be several times a week with those who find reading difficult, while once a month may be enough to check progress with children who find reading easy.

Phonics Screening Check

A phonics screening check was implemented by the government in England in 2012 and is now being implemented in other countries too.

The Check is a simple assessment designed to confirm whether children have learned phonic decoding to an appropriate standard. It is administered one-to-one near the end of Year 1 in England, with a teacher the child knows, and it takes four to nine minutes with most children. It consists of 20 real words and 20 pseudo-words that a child reads aloud to their teacher. The pseudo words have pictures of imaginary creatures beside them, so children are told that the words are the names of these pretend creatures. To succeed, a child must read most words accurately; the number has been 32 out of 40 in the past. When teachers are positive about the assessment, children enjoy the special time with their teacher and have even been known to ask to do it again.

The ability to decode words accurately is the first essential step before reading comprehension can take place. That is why children who do not succeed with the phonics check should be provided with extra help and checked again the following year. We recommend that schools continue to use the Phonics Check each year with children who have not yet succeeded.

When children can decode words accurately, the next step for reading is plenty of practice to gain fluency. When they can read words accurately and fluently, they can concentrate on understanding what they read.

Older Pupils in Primary Schools

We recommend that primary schools assess all pupils’ word reading at the beginning of each new school year (excluding the first year of systematic phonics lessons), so that teachers are aware of the word reading ability of every pupil in their class, and to make sure no pupil struggles to read words without being noticed. Schools could choose any suitable simple standardised test*, and there would be no compulsion to report results publicly. All pupils who could not read words at the level expected for their age should be provided with extra support, using an age-appropriate systematic synthetic phonics programme.

*The Burt Word Reading Test is old, but standardised, simple, free and good enough to indicate which children need extra help. Download the Burt Word Reading Test.

Assessment Secondary Schools

No child who has attended an English-speaking primary school should begin secondary school unable to access the curriculum because of poor reading. Unfortunately, it still happens.

The Simple View of Reading shows that we need two skills for reading: word reading (decoding) and language comprehension (understanding). Gough and Tunmer first wrote about it in 1986 in an article with the title “Decoding, Reading, and Reading Disability”.

Secondary schools should assess students’ reading comprehension at the beginning of the first year. If a student’s reading comprehension is poor, the difficulty may be with decoding or with language comprehension or both.

In the extensive experience of RRF members, older poor readers nearly always have poor decoding skills. It is unusual to have good decoding skills and poor language comprehension, although it is more likely for those whose first language is not English and those who have a specific learning difficulty.

Sometimes students are wrongly diagnosed as having good decoding skills but poor comprehension, because they can decode simple words yet struggle to understand what they read. However, if they can understand a text when it is read aloud to them but not when they read it themselves, the issue is not with language comprehension. Instead, they may not be able to decode more complex words, or they may not be able to decode words fluently. In either case, their difficulty with decoding makes it unreasonable to expect them to understand what they read.

That is why it is essential to assess the decoding skills of any student with poor reading comprehension by using a simple, standardised word reading test*. Students who perform poorly on this test should receive instruction through a systematic synthetic phonics programme. These programmes include additional assessments to pinpoint gaps in students’ phonic knowledge.

*The Burt Word Reading Test is old, but standardised, simple, free and good enough to indicate which children need extra help. Download the Burt Word Reading Test.