YR 1 - Nonsense words

[Okkitokkiunga]

DS morning task was to identify the nonsense words from a list of words. One of the words I recognised as being a real word, though not in every day use so I queried it with the teacher who informed me it was a nonsense word for the children's purposes as they wouldn't recognise it.

Is this usual practise? I don't want my child being taught that real words are nonsense just because they are too young to use it in their vocabulary. At this point I am thinking the teacher didn't actually know it was a real word - fine she doesn't need to know every word in the English language, however maybe they should check a nonsense word, is in fact, a nonsense word!!

Rant over

I won't disagree with you there, but I'm not sure it makes a significant difference to most words in the test.

The only reason I think they included the real words was because people would be up in arms if they introduced a pseudo word only test. That happened anyway so they may as well have not bothered.

In defence of the school, they seem to be quite good at teaching the phonics. DS is doing very well with his reading.

I would have thought that there were enough words in the English language to test phonic comprehension without making them up. Anyway, it was one word, so shall endeavour not to get my knickers in too much of a knot

The word was prate.

I queried it with the teacher who informed me it was a nonsense word for the children's purposes as they wouldn't recognise it.

Nope, this is not how the check works. There have been a couple of rather obscure words (for five year olds) that have appeared in the check since it started and neither of them were marked as nonsense words with an alien. Off the top of my head I remember 'shrubs' and 'funds' coming up.

Shrubs and funds are not particularly rare words!

The list of "nonsense words" you find in KS1 resources available on the web tend to contain words which have an definition in English, either now archaic in use (like prate, although prattle of course is more likely to be known) or only in some dialects.

www.twinkl.co.uk/resource/t-l-4540-ks1-alien-split-digraph-nonsense-word-cards all four words are real, albeit three English language names not common in the UK.

I never said that those words were rare. I said that they were obscure for most five-year-olds.

Many of the commercial resources produced to practise for the check are poor quality and demonstrate those producing them have little phonic knowledge (and perhaps poor vocabulary )