The use of pseudoword cards gives children the opportunity to read non-words and practice their recognition and matching of graphemes from the earliest stages of their phonetic development. This can help all of your children make progress in combining sounds in alien or non-word sounds, and will allow them to improve their score on these words on the Phonetic Detection Test.

I found three problems with pseudo words, aliens or speechless in the first test my kids took in 2012.

1. My most able readers tried to read the extraterrestrial non-words as real words. This is because I hadn’t practiced weird words enough with them and didn’t realize the impact this would have on their score. Some of my most capable readers did not reach the threshold.
2. Other children found that digraphs and trigraphs were more difficult to detect in non-words, so they read letters as simple sounds. They had been used to retrying real words until they made sense and would go back to looking for digraphs and triplets.
3. I had often used ‘sound buttons’ to underline phonemes in words, but there were no ‘sound buttons’ in test words. So, when trying to read the non-words, the children struggled because they did not have a point of reference to verify that they had read them correctly.

Reading alien words isn’t just about phonetic screening results

I realized that reading other than words shouldn’t be a skill that I teach simply for, or even just before, the test. Reading that they are not words is, in fact, a skill that ensures that children’s phonic knowledge is firmly ingrained and can be used to decode more complex words as they enter key stage 2.

Although I did find some excellent online resources, none of them systematically linked to the development phases of the DfE Letters and Sounds Program. I searched the Letters and Sounds Program and began to create words that used the phonemes and word structures of each phase of it. When I put these words on flashcards, I deliberately omitted the “sound buttons” or underlining for each phoneme in the word. This allowed the children to practice recognizing digraphs or triplets in non-words.

It worked? Well, for my next phonics review, the improvement in results for the children in my class was dramatic. From an approval rate below the national average in 2012, to a brilliant approval rate of more than 90% in 2013.

The changes in Phonics Screening Check 2014 mean that we will not know the threshold or pass grade until after the verification has been administered. I’m sure the skills my kids now have to read alien words, through the use of my pseudo word cards, will help them get a good score on the phonics screening test again this year.