School Days – phonics screening test

Another week, another school days post. And unbelievably we’re racing towards the end of the school year with only 5 weeks to go.

This week was a tad stressful for me because I’d been asked to come in to speak to the head, but had no clue what for. So I’d had 5 days of stewing about it.  It turned out to just be questioning if I had any issues after a bit of a moan had got back to the school. Given I’d already asked the questions of the teacher back at parents evening, there wasn’t any new news.

N of course, was unaware, and was just going about his normal school week.

Phonics screening test

The year 1 phonics screening test was this week. N’s school have been doing practice ones with the children through the year, so N knew exactly what it was, alien words and non-alien words, the proportion between the two types of words, and wasn’t worried about it.  I don’t know how he did, but each time he’s done it he’s said its easy.  I’m hoping ‘it’s easy’ isn’t just something he says to me, and it went well. N is quite literal with his reading and he’s very good at blending his phonics, so he should have done ok.  But you never know given there’s no context to the words like there is in a story.

Spelling test

N used to be really good about doing his spellings each day and would mostly get 8/8. The only time he dropped a point was if his writing wasn’t quite clear enough to work out what letter he’d written. But this week wasn’t a good spelling week. He seems to have got bored of learning them. So this week’s he learnt them on the morning of the test having not touched them since the day he received them.

He only got 5/8 correct. All 3 looked a little wild, but 2 were way out.  I’d hoped it would have taught him that he needs to actually learn them or at least practise them, but it seems not. Instead, hilariously, he blamed it on the teachers marking the spellings incorrectly!   I’m not sure his attempt this week will be much better but we’ll see.

VIP

N was awarded VIP again this week.  At least he said he did. His sticker was lost on the playing field.  And he couldn’t remember what it was awarded for. It seems that he’s impressed the trainee teacher who’s in his class at the moment, because this was the 2nd or 3rd time the same teacher has awarded him VIP.

Next week is a big one – sports week including sports day and a joint schools sports morning. So he’s really looking forward to it.