Sight words and phonicsK and grade 1
Real and nonsense words
A grid of CVC words, half real and half made up, each in a box with the choices real and nonsense beneath. The child sounds out the word and circles one. It works as a quick decoding check.
- Fresh problems every time
- Answer key on its own page
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On this page
What prints
The title is "Real or Nonsense Words" (with the vowel named first if you pick one). Words are laid out in three columns. Each word is printed in bold in a bordered box, and under it are the two options, "real" and "nonsense". The instructions tell the child to sound out each word and circle real if it is a word they know, or nonsense if it is made up.
Half the words, rounded up, are real CVC words from the word-family bank, such as cat, jug or pen. The rest come from a list of 36 invented words, such as zat, vig, wug and bix, which were chosen so that none of them is an English word. The two kinds are shuffled together. The answer key circles the correct choice for every word.
The settings
- Activity. "Real or nonsense word". Other CVC activities live on CVC words worksheets and word families worksheets.
- Vowel. Mixed vowels, or Short a, e, i, o or u. With a single vowel the nonsense pool is smaller, so you may see fewer made-up words on a long page.
- Number of words. 9 to 30. Eighteen or twenty-four make a comfortable page for most children.
Why nonsense words
A child can recognize dog from memory without decoding it. A word like vig offers no such shortcut, so reading it shows whether the child can map letters to sounds and blend them. That is why teachers often use made-up words in quick checks. Reading Rockets discusses decoding in its phonics overview.
A common stumble is a child who "fixes" a nonsense word into a real one, reading zat as "sat". That is a useful finding, not a mistake to scold. Gently ask, "Read just what the letters say."
Worked example: nine words
Set Number of words to 9 with Mixed vowels. You will get five real and four nonsense words. Suppose the page shows: pot, zin, hen, wug, bit, kib, mug, lun, sat.
- Your child sounds out pot: "p-o-t". They circle real.
- For zin they say "z-i-n" and hesitate. You ask, "Have you heard that word before?" They shake their head and circle nonsense.
- wug gets a giggle and a circle on nonsense. bit is real.
- At lun they say "sun". Point to the first letter, and they correct to "lun" and circle nonsense.
Count the circles against the key. Seven of nine is a fine starting point; note which vowels were shaky and follow up with a sort or family page.
Keeping it light
Treat it as a game: invite your child to invent their own nonsense words and decide who gets to call them real. Keep the page short and stop on a high note. These are best used a few times, not daily.