Nonsense words

Learning whole words by looking at the shape of the words, and memorising them, should be
avoided.
Most children, particularly the bottom 25%, are particularly poor at memorising words when
they have not the phonic knowledge to work them out for themselves. However, there are
some children who have an excellent memory, which enables them to learn whole words by
their shape, and for a year or two appear to be good readers. As soon as they need to recall
hundreds, or even thousands of words, then their memory starts to let them down. They
cannot cope with the larger books and quickly lose confidence. This is a severe problem for
them. It is the reason for teaching all children the alphabetic code from the beginning, and
for avoiding teaching any sight words. The reading strategy must always be blending.
With these nonsense words you will soon be able to find out why a child is having difficulties.
If a child is not able to easily read these words, then that child has a poor knowledge of
phonics. The only way to help him/her is to make sure that the letter sounds are known,
especially the digraphs and their alternatives, and that the child can blend these letter sounds
fluently. The 'First Year Checklist' (available on this disc) will provide a good guide.
Words, right from the beginning, should be read by blending the letter sounds until that word
goes into automatic recall. Jolly Phonics, and other synthetic phonics programmes, teaches
the children to blend words as soon as a few letter sounds have been taught. It is virtually the
only strategy that should be used for word identification. By doing this, the above problems
rarely happen.
Children with severe special needs are inclined to guess because they initially find blending
more difficult than the other children. These nonsense words will help to prevent the habit of
guessing. It is worth printing these sheets on to coloured paper, laminating them and cutting
them up. The children should be asked to read these words (you can pretend that they come
from another country or planet!). This stops them guessing what the words are: they have to
work them out.
Nonsense words cvc (2 pages)
Nonsense words initial and final blends (2 pages)
Nonsense words digraphs (2 pages)
Nonsense words magic 'e' (3 pages)

* Note that the nonsense words are in the Sassoon Primary Infant font. If you do not
have this font on your computer, then the words will change to a font that is on your
computer. If this is not suitable for the children to read or it doesn't fit into the
squares, then highlight and choose a more appropriate font e.g. one that does a rounded
letter <a> rather than this complicated printed one <a>, or change the font size so it fits
into the squares.
*Sassoon Primary Infant font can be purchased on the internet at www.clubtype.co.uk

Sue Lloyd

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 Sue Lloyd