Skip to main content

Reception English Progress checks

Reception English Progress checks, TheSchoolRun
In just under a year your four- or five-year-old will learn to read and write, making giant literacy leaps and laying the foundations of all their future learning. Marvel at their progress and identify any areas they need extra support and practice in at home with our Reception English Progress checks.
Keystage:  EYFS, Reception

Our Reception English Progress checks are designed to help your child practise reading and blending sounds, writing letters and structuring simple sentences.

Each term’s check consists of 20 questions and a total of 20 marks. Work through the questions with your child and make sure you read lots of traditional tales to help you prepare!


The Progress checks are designed to follow TheSchoolRun's Learning Journey for that particular term. Please note: they cannot and will not necessarily follow what your child’s teacher is doing at school this week / term, as teachers tend to choose to cover objectives in an order that they feel suits their class. Therefore, don’t worry if your child cannot complete certain questions; the point of the Progress checks is to help parents identify where children might need extra help and practice.

Reception maths objectives explained

By the end of the school year children should be confident with the following:

Reception speaking and listening

• Give spoken instructions.
• Retell stories effectively.

Reception word recognition

• Distinguish initial sounds (phonemes).
• Hear and say sounds in words in the order in which they occur.
• Explore and experiment with sounds words and texts.
• Blend CVC (consonant vowel consonant) and CVVC (consonant vowel vowel consonant) words to read.
• Link sounds to letters, naming and sounding the letters of the alphabet.
• Use knowledge of phonics to write simple words.
• Recognise some high frequency words.

Reception understanding texts

• Listen to stories and put events in order.
• Spot rhymes in poems.
• Show an understanding of the elements of stories and non-fiction texts.

Reception creating texts

• Attempt writing for a variety of purposes.
• Be able to extend rhyming patterns.

Reception sentence structure and punctuation

• Learn about sentence structure.
• Begin to attempt using a capital letter and full stop.

For more information about what your child learns in Reception English read our parents' guide; you can also browse all our Reception English worksheets or follow our Learning Journey for Reception literacy.