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Learning to read in Kindergarten to Year 2: phonics, sight words and reading at home

Parent guides. Facts checked on 16 October 2026 against the official pages listed at the foot.

Most NSW children learn to read between Kindergarten and Year 2, and the way schools teach it has changed since many parents were at school. The NSW English K-10 Syllabus (2022) teaches reading through phonics: the sounds of English, the letters that stand for them, and blending the sounds into words. Here is what that means, what sight words are now, what the Year 1 Phonics Screening Check is, and how to read with your child at home.

Try seven questions with your child on Learnest's own screens: the Kindergarten or Years 1 and 2 demo, or the free Year 2 check.

How does the NSW syllabus teach reading?

The syllabus makes phonic knowledge a focus area of its own in Early Stage 1 (Kindergarten) and Stage 1 (Years 1 and 2), beside phonological awareness, reading fluency and reading comprehension. Teachers teach the letter-sound relationships directly and in a planned order, rather than waiting for a child to pick them up from books.

A child learns to read a word by saying each sound and blending them: c, a, t, cat. They learn to spell it by doing the reverse, breaking the spoken word into its sounds and writing a letter for each. Reading and spelling are taught together because they are the same knowledge used in two directions.

What is phonics, in plain words?

Single letters
Kindergarten starts with the most useful sounds, such as s, a, t, p, i and n, and blends them into words as soon as a few are known. Two or three letters give sat, tap and pin, and the first reading begins within weeks.
Two letters, one sound
Sh, ch, th and ng are digraphs: two letters that stand for one sound. Then come the vowel teams, such as ee, ai, oa and oo, that are the main work of Year 1.
Longer words
By Year 2 a child reads words of two or three syllables by breaking them into parts, and reads the endings that change a word's job, such as -ing, -ed, -er and -es. A word is no longer sounded out letter by letter but read in chunks.
Fluency
Reading fluency has its own outcome. A child reads a familiar book smoothly, in phrases, with expression, and at a pace that leaves room to understand it.

What about sight words?

The syllabus talks about high-frequency words, the small set of words that appear in nearly every sentence: the, and, was, said, they. A child needs to read them at a glance, but most of them are decodable once the sounds are taught, and the ones that are not have only one odd part. The word said is taught as s, the odd middle, d, rather than as a shape to memorise.

So the lists of a hundred words to learn by heart, sent home a decade ago, are not how the current syllabus works. A child who can blend sounds learns the frequent words quickly, and a child who cannot does not get far by memorising them.

What is the Year 1 Phonics Screening Check?

A short check that every NSW public school gives its Year 1 students in Term 3, in weeks 4 to 6. The class teacher sits with each child one at a time for five to seven minutes, and the child reads 40 words aloud: 20 real words and 20 made-up words such as vap or blorm. The made-up words show whether the child can blend sounds rather than remember words they have seen before.

The Department of Education says the check "is carefully designed not to be stressful for your child", and the teacher stops if a child is finding it hard. It is not a test to prepare for. Its purpose is to show the school which children need more help with phonics before Year 2, and the school tells you how your child went. The official page is listed at the foot of this guide.

How do we read together at home?

  1. Use the books the school sends home. They are decodable: they use only the sounds your child has been taught, so every word can be worked out.
  2. When they stop on a word, say "sound it out", and wait. Give the first sound if they are stuck, not the word.
  3. Do not point at the picture. Guessing from the picture is a habit that works in Kindergarten and fails in Year 2.
  4. Read the same book again the next night. The second reading is for fluency, and the third is for enjoying it.
  5. Talk about it. Who was in the story? What went wrong? What would you have done?
  6. Keep reading to them. A story read aloud above their level gives them the words and sentence shapes they will meet in print next year.
  7. Ten minutes of their reading and a story from you is enough on most days. Stop before it turns into a fight.

What if my child is finding it hard?

Tell the teacher what you see at home: which sounds are shaky, whether they guess, whether they can hear the first sound in a word. Schools teach phonics in small groups and can give more time to a child who needs it, and the Year 1 check exists to find those children early. A child who starts slowly often catches up in a term once the gap is named. The years that matter are these ones, so ask now rather than in Year 3.

Questions parents ask

Should my child sound out every word?

In the first years, yes, for any word they do not know at a glance. Sounding out and blending is the skill being taught, and a word read that way a few times becomes a word known at a glance. Guessing from the picture is the habit to avoid.

Are the nonsense words in the Phonics Screening Check a trick?

No. Half of the 40 words are made-up words such as vap or blorm, so the check shows whether a child can blend sounds rather than remember words they have seen before. The teacher tells the child they are nonsense words first.

My child remembers the book rather than reading it. Is that reading?

Not yet, and it is normal. A child who has heard a book many times can recite it from the pictures. Cover the picture, point to a word they know and ask them to sound it out, and the reading starts.

How long should we read together each day?

About ten minutes of their own reading from the books the school sends home, plus a story you read to them. The story can be well above their reading level; that is where new words and sentence shapes come from.

How Learnest helps

On English days Learnest sets reading at the sounds your child has been taught: letter sounds and short words in Kindergarten, the vowel teams and tricky words in Year 1, and longer words, word endings and short passages in Year 2, with the usual slip named under a wrong answer. Maths and science questions are read aloud, so a child who is still learning to read can work alone. The first English day is a check that finds where your child is, the app teaches what is missing and brings it back in later reviews until it holds, and the nightly email names the one skill that slipped. Every question is Learnest's own.

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Sources

Checked 16 October 2026. Every date, number and rule above comes from these pages. If one of them has changed since, it is right and this page is behind.

Learnest is not affiliated with ACARA, NESA, the NSW Department of Education or the Australian Maths Trust. This guide explains the published facts in Learnest's own words; the official pages above are the record.