Printable Year 1 phonics screening check practice: real and nonsense (alien) word cards for Phase 2 to 5, plus a pupil tracking sheet.

Get your Year 1 class ready for the June phonics screening check with these printable real and nonsense word cards covering Phase 2 to Phase 5. The nonsense words come with a cartoon alien, so children learn to decode them and don’t try to guess a real word.

What’s included

A short teacher guide on how to run the practice in 5 minutes
Real word cards and alien (nonsense) word cards for each phase, Phase 2 to 5
Large, clear print on every card, with cut-out borders and 8 cards per page
A pupil tracking sheet with columns for each phase, real and alien, plus a score and a notes column
A closing page with practice tips

How to use it

Print the pages and cut out the cards.
Sort them by phase and shuffle the real and alien words together.
Ask each child to sound out the graphemes, then blend the word.
Tick the tracking sheet and use the gaps to plan intervention groups.

Great for

Year 1 teachers and teaching assistants
Small-group phonics, 1:1 practice and intervention
Parents, tutors and home educators preparing for the check
Phonics lessons using any systematic synthetic phonics programme

Please note: This is practice material. It is not the official check and doesn’t use the official words.

Keywords: phonics screening check, year 1 phonics, phase 5, nonsense words, alien words, KS1 phonics, real and pseudo words, decoding, blending.