News

This year all Year 1 students in our state have been required to sit a new, Phonics Screening Test. This is a requirement for all schools, whether they be Education Department, Religious or Independent. The purpose of this test  is for teachers to gauge how students are progressing with their Phonics Learning, what sounds need to be revised, and whether some students may need individual assistance. The test contains 40 words; some are real words like “shed”, “long”, “soil”; while some are nonsense words like, “fip”, “pon”, “hab”. The thinking behind this, is that real words can be memorized, and students who rely only on memory cannot decode an unknown word, such as a person’s name, if they have no decoding strategies. The real words may test their memory or their strategies; it’s impossible to tell. But the nonsense words require the students to use all of the strategies which are explicitly taught in our InitiaLit Phonics lessons, at St. Columba’s.

Teachers have now completed these tests, and will register the results with the State Department responsible for this project. Then the data will be carefully examined by our teachers, and lessons will be planned accordingly, to give students the best opportunity to fully develop their phonics skills.

We employ several tests for our students, from Running Records, PAT testing, weekly InitiaLit tests, to name but a few. This Phonics Screening Test is another that will give us important  data, which allows us to provide the exact help that your child requires to succeed, with Phonics Learning.

Regards,

Mandy Thompson