Year 1 Phonics Check

Go to the Year 1 Phonics Check

The Year 1 Phonics Check is a great way to assess your students’ decoding skills across words of increasing complexity. The results from the Phonics Check help you to plan instruction for your students in an informed way. It’s a quick, free screening tool for teachers.

What is the Phonics Check?

  • A free, 7-minute screener
  • Individually administered
  • For Year 1 and Year 2 students, as well as older struggling readers
  • Online or paper-based

What can you do with Phonics Check data?

  • Identify the decoding strengths and instructional needs for individual students, whole classes and year levels
  • Identify students who might need intervention for their phonics learning
  • Track effectiveness of your phonics instruction across time
  • Monitor the trends in your students’ decoding ability across years
  • Plan next steps in your phonics instruction for individual students and groups

The Phonics Check automatically categorises students’ decoding ability into three groups:

  • Fluent decoders: score range of 28-40
  • Developing decoders: score range of 20-27
  • Struggling decoders: score range of 0-19

Discover how the Year 1 Phonics Check fits with the Australian Curriculum V9

The Phonics Check journey

Set up and support

Learn how to set up and manage your account.

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Prepare

Find out about getting ready to run the Phonics Check.

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Conduct

View videos of teachers running the Phonics Check with students.

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Analyse and respond

Find out about using the data from the Phonics Check to support student learning.

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