Reading Games

Ruth Gilmore Ingulsrud

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Here is a collection of game ideas; both borrowed and original:

These are games that I invented to help teach reading while at the same time challenging and accomodating those students who have trouble sitting still. The games address different reading levels, but all engage the students in active participation.

Reading Games

Letter Jump
*Prepare large, durable cards with letters (capital or lower case) printed clearly on the front and prepare matching letter cards which are smaller and fold in half to hide the letter
*It helps to have velcro affixed to the back when playing on a carpet surface
*Place the cards, letter side up, all around the room
*Cards may be placed in a large circle or along the walls of the classroom
*Distribute small letter cards to half the class; at your signal they may hop to their corresponding large card and step on it
*When all students have found their cards they turn them back in to the teacher or hand them off to one of the students who is waiting on the sidelines and the hopping begins again

Variations: this game may be run as a relay race with two or more teams competing to find all of their letters and return home the fastest

Vowel Digraph Treasure Hunt
*Prepare word cards containing different groups of vowel digraphs
*Examples include; each, peel, cheat, seal, tea and float, soap, hope, note, oats
*Lay the cards face down outside on and around a play structure, for example
*You may form your class into several teams; each team is responsible for finding all the words containing a certain sound, such as the ee sound in the word, teeth. The spelling may be different (ea for example) but the sound must be the same
*If you pick up a card that does not contain the sound your team is searching for, you must lay it down where you found it
*The team that collects all of their cards first wins and earns the chance to lay out the cards for the next hunt

Letter Charades
Students act out things that begin with a certain letter while the class tries to guess the letter
*Gather the students in a large circle
*Pull names out of a hat or use popsicle sticks to select a student to act out the letter
*Sounds may or may not be allowed to adjust level of difficulty, but no words or sounds of that letter may be used
*Teacher may whisper the letter or secretly show the student the letter to be guessed

Variations: difficulty may be increased by trying to act out words that end in a certain letter

Silly Reading
This game is best played one on one or in smaller reading groups.
*The teacher reads aloud a story which is at the zone of proximal development for that group of students
*As the teacher reads she will intentionally make occasional decoding errors
*The students should be reading along with the teacher, watching carefully for her to make a mistake
*When a student detects an error, they will raise their hand and then must locate the error and read it back correctly
*This difficulty level of this game may be made adjusted according to the kind of word substituted by the teacher for the actual one; it can be a word that is very close in pronunciation or meaning or it can be very silly and unrelated