It's been a few years now since I was a classroom teacher, after Ethan was born I decided not to go back to work when my maternity leave finished and to stay home with him instead.  I have kept up with some of the changes to the curriculum in schools, but somehow the Year 1 Phonics Screening Check completely slipped by me, so I was very surprised when I found out about it at the beginning of the school year information meeting with Ethan's teacher.  Basically at the end of year one all of the Year One children across the country will be tested on reading a set of 40 words, including real words as well as non-words.  These non-words are referred to as alien words and are made up of a combination of phonics sounds, blends, digraphs and trigraphs.  We decided to have a little fun and make up our own non words to name some monsters in a really simple game to help prepare Ethan for the screening check and generally work on his phonetic reading skills.

• white boards
• scrabble tiles
• washi tape
• magnetic letters
• white board markers
• white board eraser

The game couldn't be easier to play, the only thing that I wanted to prepare in advance was the digraphs and trigraphs.  There are a few that Ethan doesn't always recognise in words, so this will be a great way to go over them.  I made as many digraphs as I could with the assorted Scrabble tiles that I had, using washi tape to stick them together at the back.

These are all digraphs and trigraphs that the children should be able to read by the end of Year One.