Practise reading a variety of real and alien words 

Each document contains a variety of different words your child can practise reading at home.  The more they practise, the more confident they will feel.  Once you have opened a document, scroll down to the second page to find the child friendly flashcards with the words.  Alien words will have picture of an alien next to them so children understand that these are not real words.  

Tips for reading

Encourage your child to spot the diagraph/trigraph before attempting to read the word - we use this technique during our daily phonics lessons.  Children can then sound out the word and then blend to read. 

Alien words can be more tricky for children so it is helpful for even confident readers to sound it out first before blending to read to ensure accuracy. 

Real words can often have alternative sounds for example in giant the g makes a /j/ sound or in head the ea digraph makes an /e/ sound.  It is important that children self correct when reading real words when they realise that the word they have said is not a real word. 

Videos

Below you will find two videos for parents to explain more about alien words as well as how we teach blending.  

Games

The children love to play phonics games and we have put two of our favourite games at the bottom of this page where children can read words and then decide if they are real or alien. 

PHONICS GAMES