How do you feel about nonsense words? I haven’t met many people who just love them but it turns out that nonsense words make a lot of sense.

I know it doesn’t seem all that practical and useful. After all part of reading is using context and our mental dictionary to make sense of what we are reading. As long as they are reading real words, why should we worry about their ability to read nonsense?

It turns out that it does matter. In fact, leading researcher, Dr. Keith E. Stanovich, has pointed out that one of the most consistent research findings amongst kids with dyslexia is that they are worse at reading nonsense words than typical readers.

The research is clear that kids who can read nonsense words well are better readers, but will practicing nonsense words make them better readers? Again the answer is yes. Instructional programs that include nonsense words outperform those that just focus on real words. Several studies including this one by Jessica M. Cardenas have shown this to be the case.

Nonsense words require a student to actually decode a word without using any context, pictures, mental dictionary, or guessing. It engages our student’s brains in actually using what they are being taught. If that wasn’t enough, some students have better fluency when reading nonsense words. Experts predict that fluency likely improves because students aren’t worried about comprehension or finding the right word in their mental dictionary.

But what do we do if our students hate nonsense words? Well beyond bribing them (just kidding!) we can do our best to make nonsense more tolerable by commiserating, joking about all the nonsense in nonsense words, and trying to add a bit of fun where we can.

Here are 6 ways I have added nonsense words to our day without making my kids miserable. Before I list them though, I did want to mention that I have included ideas for both reading and spelling nonsense words here and the research shows that you should include both as well.

Without further delay, here are the ideas:

1. Games: Games are always first on my list. Here are a few options….Write out nonsense words on index cards cards and have students read a card on their turn with any board game or card game or print out two sets of nonsense words and play Go Fish or Memory with them.
2. Word Sort: Have students sort out real and nonsense words either by sorting out index cards or putting a “R” for real and “N” for nonsense on a list of words.
3. Word Build: Read a nonsense word to your student and ask your student to build it using letter tiles or other letter manipulatives. For added practice, after the word is built your student can write the word and say each letter sound as he or she writes each letter.
4. Get Outside: Lets get out side and gather a handful of stones! Each stone will represent 1 sound in a word. For example, in the nonsense word, ploth, there will be 4 stones for “p”, “l”, “o”, and “th”. Read a nonsense word to your student. Ask how many sounds they hear and have them lay out a stone for each sound from left to right. As they set each stone down, have them say the sounds for the word. Once the stones are set down, have them write the correct letter below each stone with sidewalk chalk.
5. Draw It: If you have one of those kids who loves to draw, tap into that creativity. Give them a nonsense word such as toblot. You could either give this to them orally and have them spell it or show them the word and have them read it. Either way, once they have completed the task, invite them to draw a toblot.
6. Invent a Story: Give your student a bank of words. The bank should include a few high-frequency words and a few nonsense words. Have them read through the list and then invite them to create a story with the words. Once they have written the story they should also read the story to you and, if they want, draw a picture to go with it.

The spom toll had a gock and dink. It lew them domt on my tob moff.

I know that nonsense words can be a real frustration. It certainly is in my home! But it is worth it! In his book, Progress in Understanding Reading, Dr. Stanovich, noted that “the speed of naming pronounceable nonwords is one of the tasks that most clearly differentiates good from poor readers”.

With that kind of evidence, we can’t afford to leave out this particular kind of nonsense!