Max Shi reads words that flash on a laptop screen for his teacher, Megan Gordon to hear.
"Dat," he says.
"Quass, glog."
Reading nonsense words alongside real ones is a key part of a new year 1 phonics screening program that will be introduced to all public primary schools from next year.
Maribyrnong Primary School was selected as one of the 26 schools to begin using the check for their students this term before it is rolled out across the system.
Half of the students at the school have English as an additional language.
Principal Andrew Buesnel said they started to put a greater emphasis on explicit teaching of phonics about three years ago to help these students.
"What we found through the data we've collected is that this benefits all students, not just our students where English is their second or third language," Mr Buesnel said.
"So when student data is telling you something and that everyone is benefiting you carry on."
The school has its own assessment literacy program but the federal government's free year 1 phonics check will be a new tool to keep track of the students' progress.
"There'll be some really helpful data that comes from this for us, and I think for our system more widely as well," Mr Buesnel said.
What is a phonics check?
Phonics is the relationship between letters and sounds. The phonics check is an online or paper-based test teachers can complete with students one-on-one.
It takes about five to seven minutes and involves the student reading 40 words. The teacher makes a note of which words the student read correctly and any words they find difficult. The data is then analysed by the teacher to see which areas need improvement.
The check includes 20 real words and 20 non-words, also known a pseudo words. The reason pseudo-words are used - such as dat or glog - is so students must rely on sounding out the words using their knowledge of phonemes (sounds) and graphemes (letters or groups of letters).
Professor Saskia Kohnen, director of the Australian Catholic University's Australian Literacy Clinic, said phonics was a crucial ingredient of early literacy and a strong predictor of later reading comprehension.
"It's important to check that the learning has actually happened, because if it hasn't, then we want to reteach and maybe intensify teaching. And so the phonics check is a measure that can facilitate that process," Prof Kohnen said.
"I heard one teacher say that when she did the test, she found that the children were really good at sounding out, but they couldn't do the blending. And so this information can really help the teachers plan the instruction."
Prof Kohnen said the screening would help schools identify students who needed extra support and would give direction on where more teacher training or resources were needed.
It comes at a time when all states and territories are moving towards the explicit teaching of phonics with the aim of lifting stagnant literacy levels.
"I think if we want big change, then we need to measure how we're tracking, because otherwise we might not have a reference point of how well this is going," she said.
Resistance to phonics
The ACT has come late to the year 1 phonics check.
As recently as last year, ACT Education Minister Yvette Berry dismissed calls for a mandated phonics check while maintaining a kindergarten literacy assessment known as BASE was adequate.
Ms Berry previously said the check was freely available for teachers to use if they wished. But some Canberra teachers told researchers from Equity Economics school leaders had instructed them not to use the free year 1 phonics check or downloadable decodable reading books.
Prof Kohnen said some teachers were concerned the nonsense words would disadvantage students who were already competent readers. But this was found to not be the case in studies led by Prof Anne Castles.
Others worried about having too many assessments in schools.
"I would say that a test that ... has a really clear goal and that identifies gaps and also achievements in crucial aspects of the curriculum are very worthwhile to conduct," Prof Kohnen said.
An expert review of literacy and numeracy instruction in ACT school found there was great variation in the way schools taught children to read.
The panel recommended the ACT introduce the year 1 phonics check as one measure to bring consistency across the education system.
Other states have seen a marked improvement after bringing in a year 1 phonics check.
South Australia was the first state to begin the screening in 2018. The first year of the screening, only 43 per cent of students were able to decode 28 or more of the words in the check.
By 2023, 71 per cent of students met this benchmark, an improvement of 28 percentage points. Disadvantaged communities, Indigenous students and regional schools all showed improvement compared to the previous year.
NSW began phonics checks in 2021, followed by commitments from Tasmania, Victoria and Western Australia.
Other states have committed to publishing results at state level. But the ACT government has so far refused to make the results of year 1 phonics screening public.
ACT Alliance for Evidence-Based Education co-founder Jessica Del Rio said there was no reason the phonics check results shouldn't be made public.
"Other jurisdictions publish their results at an aggregate level and broken down by key demographics," Ms Del Rio said.
"It's actually totally bizarre that the ACT is not planning to publish the results of the year 1 phonics checks. It's just public data."
ACT Education Directorate deputy director-general Jane Simmons said the focus was on student learning rather than setting up lists of schools' achievement.
"We've got no plans to share those results public, because the intention of the phonics test is for teachers to make decisions about where students are at in their learning," Ms Simmons said.
Checks and balances
The year 1 phonics check is not the only way to ensure students are on track with learning to read.
St Anthony's Parish Primary School uses a program for kindergarten to year 2 called Initial Lit. It provides lesson plans and slide decks for teachers to follow - with their own personal spin.
Shannon Henry's kindergarten class starts the day with "alphabet fun". Letters and groups of letters flash on the board and students repeat the sounds.
She regularly does phonics checks with her students in line with what the students have learned in the Initial Lit program throughout the year. It allows her to hone in on any skills her students are struggling with.
"I know immediately what I need to fix and what I need to focus on," Mrs Henry said.
The school also uses the NSW phonics check in year 1 to keep track of students' progress.
Principal Erin Marmont said since the literacy blocks were introduced in 2021, the school had noticed a lift across all of its data, including improved NAPLAN results.
"The results are telling us it's working," she said.
