Reading Activities, Games, and Strategies
Reading is an area that sometimes students try to avoid. The best way to encourage children to read and develop their skills is to provide fun and engaging activities, games and strategies. In teaching reading there are three important areas of instruction 1) Phonemic Awareness, 2) Phonics, and 3) Vocabulary. Phonemic Awareness is the awareness and ability to manipulate sounds (phonemes) in spoken words. Phonics is a teaching strategy for reading by teaching letter sounds and letter recognition. Vocabulary is words known to a person. Below I have complied a list of some of my favorite reading activities for children to complete at home and in the classroom.
Magic Spoons
- Synopsis: Students will practice their phoneme blending skills through Magic Spoons. When completing Magic Spoons, students are practicing sounding out words and combining two sounds together. Magic spoon creates real and nonsense words for students to practice sounding out and combining sounds.
- Materials: Spoons with consonant letter on it and word family ending sheets
- Directions: Using a pack of spoons, write a consonant on each one. One a sheet of paper teachers will create various different word family endings (i.e. /an/, /ed/, /ig/, etc). Students will take a spoon with a constant on it and match it to the beginning of the word endings. They will say the sounds out loud and blend them together creating a word (it can be a nonsense word). After they go through all the words on the sheet, they can pick a new spoon and repeat the process.
Sight Word Connect 4 Game
- Synopsis: Sight words are common reoccurring words found on almost any page of text. As children are learning to read, these are the words they need to learn how to automatically identify and read correctly. Sight Word Connect 4 combines a fun board game and sight word practice for students. This game will allow children to practice identifying their sight words and even practice using them in sentences.
- Materials: Connect 4 game, circle stickers, a marker, and sight word list
- Directions:
- Game Set Up
- Using the sight word list, write the words on the stickers. Stick only one sticker to each piece (only ONE side).
- Have two students come play
- Game Play
- Have the two players decide what color they want to be and have them place the pieced with the sticker face down.
- Play the game as typical Connect 4 but when the student goes to pick up the piece, ask him or her to read the word. If they get it wrong, let them know what the word is (help them sound it out). If they get it right, praise them!
- A variation to the game would be that if the student does not correctly read the sight word, they lose their turn. This is up to the teacher or leader of the activity.
- Game Set Up
Word Breakdown - Phonemic Awareness Chart
- Synopsis: Phonemic awareness is the awareness and ability to manipulate sounds in spoken words. This involves phoneme blending, phoneme isolation, phoneme manipulation, and phoneme segmentation. Word Breakdown is a great activity chart that can help students with sight words, vocabulary words, and even student names. Students are learning to identify the letters, sounds, and syllables in words.
- Directions: Create a four-column paper similar to the picture. There should be column for words, letters, sounds (phonemes), and syllables. Students will have to fill in the chart based on rows for example: if the word was your, the students will identify how many letters there are, how many phonemes there are, and finally how many syllables there are.
Sound Hop
- Synopsis: In a classroom there are different types of learners. Sound Hop is a great physical activity for kinesthetic leaners. Students will hop from dot to dot as they say each sound in the word. Students will be able to practice their phonemic awareness skills by segmenting words based on phonemes.
- Materials: Large dots to place on the ground, plenty of room, and list of words (i.e. vocabulary words, spelling words, sight words, etc)
- Directions: Students will form a line behind the teacher and the dots. The teacher will give the student a word to practice segmenting based on sounds. As each child says each sound, they will hop from dot to dot saying each sound.
Decoding Words Strategy
- Synopsis: When learning to read, students often times will get stuck on a word. This decoding poster is a great reminder to all the strategies the students learned in class to help determine a word. This poster is a great reinforcer on decoding words when reading a text.
- Directions: While students are reading (either independently or in a group setting) and they get stuck on a word, they will use the poster for help. Students will be taught how to complete each strategy to successfully do it on their own. Only once they have tried all the strategies and they are still stuck, the teacher will assist on decoding the word.
Candy Land Letter Game
- Synopsis: Children love to play board games. Board games are perfect way to make learning fun. Candy Land Letter Game is combing candy land with letter recognition and letter phoneme practice.
- Materials: Candy Land game, clear tape, and maker.
- Directions:
- Game Set Up:
- Cover the trail with clear tape.
- Using the marker, write a letter in each space. It is up to the game leader (teacher or parent) to decide whether the letters are uppercase or lowercase.
- Game Play:
- Candy Land Letter Game is played like normal; however, when landing on the final space, the player has to recognize the letter by saying the letter and its sound.
- For a more challenging approach, instead of having the child just recognize the letter have them brainstorm a word that starts with the letter
- Game Set Up:
Alphabet Sounds Fishing and Matching Game
- Synopsis: In the early ages, children need to constantly practice phonemic awareness skills and letter recognition skills. Alphabet Sounds Fishing and Matching games always children to practice matching letter sounds to the corresponding letter and matching uppercase letters to lower case letters.
- Materials: Ping-Pong balls, square bucket, sharpie, water, net, and empty egg cartons
- Directions:
- Game Set Up
- Using the sharpie, write lower case letters on the Ping-Pong balls and upper case letter in the empty egg carton slots.
- Fill the clear bucket up with water and place the ping-pong balls in the bucket.
- Set the net next to the tub.
- Game Play
- Say a letter sound for children to hear. Once they hear the sound, they are to use the next to find the Ping-Pong ball with that letter on it.
- After they identify the lowercase ball, they are to place it in the corresponding uppercase letter slot in the egg carton.
- Play the game until all letters are found and sorted. Go through the alphabet saying each sound as a review.
- Game Set Up