The 2023 phonics screening check: all 40 words

The 2023 phonics screening check had 40 words: 20 real and 20 alien. The pass mark (officially the "threshold mark") was 32 out of 40. Below is every word from the 2023 paper, in the order children read them, with the alien words marked. Print it, sit side by side, and let your child read it the way the teacher will: one word at a time, no rush, and no help from you.

Alien words are made up, so children can't have memorised them. They show whether a child can really sound out a word they've never seen. In the real check each alien word has a picture of an alien next to it so children know it's a "name", not a word they're supposed to recognise. If your child is new to them, read Alien words, explained first.

The 2023 phonics screening check: all 40 words

dashed = alien (made-up) word · solid = real word

2023 phonics screening check, all 40 words · Crown copyright, reused under the Open Government Licence v3.0 · free to print from phonogramfun.com/learn

What the 2023 paper tests

Section 1 starts gently: three-letter words with single sounds, then words with one letter team (like sh and or), then consonant blends. Section 2 moves on to vowel teams, split vowels and longer words. Here is every letter team in the 2023 paper and the words it appears in (alien words in italics with an asterisk):

Split vowels (a vowel, a consonant, then an e that makes the vowel say its name) appear in drave, phibe, strave, white, strike. These trip up a lot of children, because they read the first vowel short.

The last four real words are the longest: elbow, tailor, sequins, whirling. whirling splits into whirling. Children who stall here usually know every sound but lose their place in a long word; covering half the word with a finger and reading it in two parts helps.

Words that came back from earlier papers

The check reuses some words. In 2023, the real words chip (also 2012); scrap (also 2012, 2015); strike (also 2013, 2015, 2018) had appeared before. That's not a reason to drill these exact words: the next paper will use different ones. It does show which patterns the check keeps coming back to, especially the three-letter blends like str, scr and spl near the end of Section 2.

How to use this paper at home

1. Do one section, not both. Twenty words is plenty for one sitting. Do Section 1 one day and Section 2 another.
2. Say nothing while they read. In the real check the teacher can't help, so note which words go wrong instead of correcting on the spot.
3. Look for the pattern in the mistakes. If shob goes wrong, is it the sh? One sound that keeps tripping them up is worth ten minutes a night for a week.
4. Then move to another year. Fresh words test the skill; repeated words test memory. There are 13 papers on the past papers page.

The official 2023 materials are published by the Standards and Testing Agency: 2023 pupils' materials (PDF). This page lists the same 40 words in the same order.

← The 2022 paper · The 2024 paper →

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