Classroom Ideas The Big List of K-2 Literacy Centers Forty ideas to inspire you! Give students a list of words (this is a great review activity! Prodigy Math Best for: 1st to 8th grade Be your students' math classroom hero with Prodigy Math, an online role-playing game (RPG) that turns math into an adventure. Objectives These small-group or whole-class games will engage students as they build a variety of reading skills. This game is good for early fluent to fluent readers. Change the grid size. But fun is an outcome, not a purpose. Players take turns calling out coordinates (for example, C7). Six Games for Reading By: Bank Street College of Education Here are six games parents or tutors can use to help young readers practice word recognition, spelling patterns, and letter-sound knowledge. What are your favorite classroom games? This game is played in pairs. When teaching literacy, in order to differentiate the learning of their students, most teachers will plan and develop weekly literacy groups to meet the needs of each ability level,using a variety of literacy skills and activities. By Hoa P. Nguyen March 26, 2021 5. Consider contributing a question to be answered in a future post. Each time a player has a match, he or she reads the words, and puts down the pair, face up. These ready-to-use butterfly facts are perfect for getting a jump start on your next biology lesson or National Butterfly Day celebrations! Here are 17 different literacy strategies you can use in your classroom: 1. A third grade teacher at a Fayette County elementary school brought nature into the classroom, and then used it as a springboard for an immersive outdoors learning experience. 101 John F Kennedy Pkwy | Short Hills | NJ | 07078 | (973) 921-5500, Protected: Classroom Talk-to-Text Project. Instead of matching words, rhyming words can be used. 4 Effective Strategies For Teaching Vowel Combinations, Blended Learning Strategies? Reading keeps kids learning for the rest of their lives. Writing samples from real kids pre-K3. Give your child a small soccer ball (or any soft ball), and instruct them to kick the ball toward the letter cups. This matching card game is based on speed, which can be great for kids working on fluency. Add vocabulary words or definitions to the Jenga blocks, and students have to define the word or say the definition of the word when they pull the block. Puzzles can have just the word parts on them OR they can have a picture at the top with the word below. This depended on the text type the students were learning or the areas I felt they requiredextra support and practise. Including Band-Aids is the perfect touch!). Headbands: Students review knowledge of academic-vocabulary terms by placing a term over their heads while players give clues until the person holding the term guesses correctly. PBS Kids Storybook Adventure or Story Creator is one of those free literacy games that kids will love using. What were their favorite parts? Take a stack of plastic cups, and write a single letter on each. Help Arthur build a new park and beautify Elwood City! In this version, students use their spelling and/or vocabulary words as their ships. Paul Sweeney, Playing with Word Sounds: Stretch and Shorten, Cracking the Code: How and Why Big Horn Elementary School Went All-In with Structured Literacy, Print-to-Speech and Speech-to-Print: Mapping Early Literacy, 100 Childrens Authors and Illustrators Everyone Should Know, A New Model for Teaching High-Frequency Words, 7 Great Ways to Encourage Your Child's Writing, Screening, Diagnosing, and Progress Monitoring for Fluency: The Details, Phonemic Activities for the Preschool or Elementary Classroom, How I Teach Students to Use Context in Vocabulary Learning, Meet Ali Kamanda and Jorge Redmond, authors of Black Boy, Black Boy: Celebrating the Power of You, Introduce a poem or rhyming story such as, Encourage the child to point out words in books that have a similar spelling pattern as in. Address the whole child using data-informed practices, gain valuable insights, and learn strategies that can benefit your district. They can search for one word at a time, with you providing the next word to the team once the first is found. Print the words clearly and boldly on separate 3x5 inch index cards, making pairs of each word. If they can read the words and they rhyme they can keep them. Teacher demonstration, modeling, and follow-up independent practice are critical factors for success. As they unravel the story, point out the words they are discovering in the text. Was it too scary? Here are five literacy games that can double as informal assessments: 1. Instead of turning to worksheets to fill those spaces, teachers I work with play with language in those transition times throughout the day. Find out what a mentor text is, how to use them with your students and titles you can add to your classroom library in this comprehensive teacher guide! 1. Once the list is done, allow 20 more seconds to wrap up any remaining words, then pencils down and count. Have students read every word they flip over for practice. is with playdough. Put together poems and nursery rhymes. Students fit that rectangle on their grid paper and record the product inside that rectangle. Students will use language skills and develop an understanding of similarities. How to use literacy games in the classroom Like making reading fun, literacy games help motivate students to practice and learn, often without feeling like they are working. Provides immediate feedback for teacher to plan small-group interventions. Once your readers are feeling more confident, take our scavenger hunt game mentioned above and add a new twist.. You're Tired. Rectangle Fit. This should be used with children who write fairly comfortably, usually second grade or older. These fun daily moments can improve reading skills and help reluctant readers find joy in the written word. You never know what a child may love to read. Students use letters (keep it fun by printing them on interesting shapes) to build words. As each fish is turned over, the child names the picture and places it in the appropriate pile under the key letter / picture. Learn how your comment data is processed. All kids love the game of Memory. What are your favorite literacy centers for K2 students? Education Week + DigitalVision Vectors + iStock/Getty Images. This set up allows students to use the picture to check that they have the word assembled correctly. Here are our favorite ways to keep reading fun! Practice reading phonics-based or vocabulary words and emphasize meaning. Quiz Yourself: How Much Do You Know About Student Engagement? This blog post has some great free apps that are worth trying, 40 Free iPad Apps for Teaching Spelling. Fun. Games are fun. DOWNLOAD NOW A COLLECTION OF FUN READING ACTIVITIES Instead of numbers, students have to mark if they have the sight word called or if they have a rhyme for the word that is called. This literacy game uses a giant die [although if this is unavailable small dice can be used instead] and provides primary children with practice in counting syllables. Over the years, I have found and created hundreds of games. These 10 games are perfect for students who need to have a little fun or if youre looking to add a little gamifying to your classroom lesson plans. To play: 1. Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide elementary, middle, high school and more. If your attempts at fiction are met with indifference, try a book about their favorite animal (sharks, dinosaurs, or lemurs are popular here), learn about space or strange weather events. Here are some great sentence structure activities that may be helpful to you for this station: This was the station that I was always positioned at. Studying contest This game can help students study lesson content and quickly analyze information, making it beneficial for reviewing test material. Select one student to be "It". It is easily adaptableuse regular die for smaller products, 10-sided die for larger; you can even adapt to decimals! Here are some of my favorite literacy activities and games: You can adapt this group game to practice blending and segmenting or to help students with specific sounds or blends. This would be perfect for synonyms or matching vocabulary words to pictures, too. The more often they are included as part of the curriculum the better children get at organising themselves . We all know that the ability levels of the students in our classroomsvary greatly! Here are a few activities to try with your kids. If you are working on multiple spellings, you can extend the game by having students sort the words by spelling. Select five to ten words from a book (or books) the child is reading. No more searching all over for just the right activity. Find the best apps for building literacy skills. Take photos of amazing animals and record what you find in your notebook. Your students will enjoy practicing some literacy skills with these colorful, engaging games! Shuffle the cards and place them face down in neat rows. Reading Board Games FREE Sight Words, Vowel Teams, Blends, and Digraphs. America Reads at Bank Street College of Education. Students can have a different partner for each strategory. To sink a word, the player must correctly spell the wordand they get bonus points for defining it, using in a sentence, etc. Most points win! For this indoor game, you have to print out animal photos and paste them onto a cardboard sheet. Students can draw pictures or make it a game with pictures around the room and students have to race to get the pictures to retell the story first. Explore Molly's town, play games, and help her neighbors pick blueberries, find agate stones, and make syrup! Leave messages in pictures for children to solve using their knowledge of letters and sounds. Once students identify the main themes, ask them to break them down further and quickly summarize the story. Four strategies for bringing student-centered instruction to your classroom. The word dialogic means to have a dialogue, and thats exactly what this activity is designed to do. Now the game can begin. 1. You can do this much like our scavenger hunt-style games, but instead of saying the words aloud, provide a list.. Preschool Songs Singing and listening to music can have a profoundly positive affect on children's literacy understanding. We also feature a few classroom tools for teachers and a few extra learning games that are fun. .) These games include Draw Me, Headbands, Kahoot, and Jenga. The first way is: The children choose their favourite fairy tale,[or any short story they know well]. I have suggested that the children themselves are involved in making the games. How to Use Gameplay to Enhance Classroom Learning | Edutopia Game-Based Learning How to Use Gameplay to Enhance Classroom Learning Research shows that using games in teaching can help increase student participation, foster social and emotional learning, and motivate students to take risks. Cards are spread face down on the floor or table. Take our short quiz to test your knowledge of 'looping' in schools. Check out this example of consonant blend puzzles. Then you have students read for fluency. Maybe so, but what happened next? So easy and fun! This is a fun way to create your own story around your childs favorite characters. and how to read the prompt closest to your right thumb. For example, if you were working on ck, students might write, If you were working on long e sounds, they might write. Check out these ready to print. Its amazing how refreshing a change of setting can be.. Looking for a calmer alternative to the secret word game? is a simple way to bring customizable games to your classroom. With a scan for these three pitfalls, here is short list of what I hope to find, or that I build in, to games that make the cut: A few favorites. The second trickiest part is folding them, but a video walks you through it pretty quickly and my students seem to know how to do it. You cant go wrong with this literacy-themed version of the classic board game. (All that squeezing is great for building hand strength, too.). For younger students, a word search is a challenging way to encourage early reading. The Concept of 'Looping' in Schools: Quiz Yourself. These favorites can be from books or TV. This set up allows students to use the picture to check that they have the word assembled correctly. The rules for this one can be changed to work for you! Five fun games use selections of reading text to build students' skills in syllabication, sentence structure, sequencing, word recognition, skimming, and visual recognition. This game can also be used to build letter recognition and letter/sound association. Looking for even more great learning activities to engage your kids? Glue two of these sheets inside a file folder and laminate (so its reusable and ready to go for many games!). Once I had the groups, I developed a display board which clearly showed the groups and the activities using a group activity spinning wheel. I have a lot of literacy activities in my store, but there is an even better way to have literacy activities and so many more resources at your fingertips: The Top Notch Teaching Members Club. I also may use them at the beginning of a lesson to spark engagement and raise the energy level in my classroom. If two or more people are solving the same problem, the faster thinker dominates the thinking in the game. 10 Fun Literacy Games. These are too awesome! Student reasoning is embedded. One tip for using games: make sure you follow up on any student confusion or misunderstanding. Weve pulled together this long list so you can have plenty of simple options at your fingertips. How To Set Up Digital Literacy Centers. If you were working on long e sounds, they might write jeans, teacher, feet, teeth, twenty, If you are working on multiple spellings, you can extend the game by having students sort the words by spelling. Would a different ending be more fun? or contractions, (can't; cannot, etc.). Are the participants from DRC on track?If so,can you respond and identify your self, Submitted by Venuste (not verified) on June 4, 2016 - 5:50pm. Then hand it off to your students to take their turns. It is adaptable and reusable (so we dont get bogged down in a new game taking time to learn the directions). Six Literature Games For The Classroom 6 min Looking for literature games for the classroom? We love this idea for recording prior and new background knowledge on a topic, but its easily adaptable to other comprehension strategies, too. This educational MMO takes kids ages 8 to 13 on a knowledge quest through language arts, math, science, and social studies. Why I like this game: Real fluency is knowing when a strategy is a good ideaAKA flexibility. This is a great way to stretch your little storytellers imagination. Keep reading fun and active when you step outside the book and asking your child what happens next: Any question that gets them thinking through the story on their own is both fun and helpful for reading comprehension., Pictures are a great way for kids to follow along with a story. Learning to read is a huge milestone in a childs life. And whenever you have free time to set up learning games in your kindergarten classroom, take out these animal cutouts and place them in your class. In this case, players ask for "a word that sounds like 'night'" At the end, the child can earn extra points by dictating or writing additional words that rhyme with the base words, or creating "silly" sentences using the rhymes. Whatever your child is into, and whatever their reading level, theres a book for them. Though many children begin the basics of reading at home, most solidify their skills and become accomplished readers in the classroom. Check out this example of, My students love cootie catchers (you may call them fortune tellers or chatterboxes), so they are a great way to practice phonics. Copyright 2023 WETA Public Broadcasting, Visit WETA's other education websites: Start with a Book|Colorn Colorado|AdLit|LD OnLine, Author Interviews These students are out of the game. Subscribe to our curated library of teacher-designed resources and tools for one easy price. Well be covering reading activities by grade level both for the classroom and at home, as well as some activities to improve reading comprehension after your students are reading independently.. Adventure Academy Who's reading for an adventure? If not they replace them on the table. Instead of searching for the exact spoken words on your list, give students the challenge to find the words synonym in the text. Copyright Amanda Thompson @ Thompson's Teachings | Blog Design Sabrina Dias @ Sabrina Dias & Company. Who is the main character? Reading isnt effective if theyre struggling to understand the words on the page, or how they all fit together to create the story. Its titled Classroom Management Q&As: Expert Strategies for Teaching. Shuffle and deal three to six cards to each player. "Yes, here are 'S' pictures: sssun, sssnake, sssaxophone.". You might also be interested in several game collections Ive created. If a player draws a card that matches one in his or her hand, he/she reads the two matching words in order to keep the pair. The laundry basket makes this a self-contained and portable activity. For this station, the focus would be the weekly phoneme the studentswere learning about in class. Annotate the text. This content is provided by our sponsor. Kahoot! You can send one to me at lferlazzo@epe.org. Several of my favorites from this text include: Digit Place, Estimation Jar, Whole-Class Pig, and Guess My Rule. Set out books, a piece of titled chart paper, and a stack of sticky notes, and youre good to go for an engaging and authentic center activity. Support reading comprehension with a simple storytelling center tied to a classroom read aloud. We love this idea for fluency practice with a familiar poem! Looking for easy last day of school ideas for elementary or middle school? It is really hard to pick, but here are two that I hold up for different reasons. Bundles that you can download with one click. Helps with: Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies Buzzmath Looking to improve outcomes in a way that kids will enjoy? ), Select two or three sets of fish pictures that start with the same letters and mix them up. Copyright 2023. Ask students to build real compound words and then challenge them to spell and draw the silliest made-up ones they can think of, too. For adding fractions, the card looks like this: To begin, students work individually to create a problem that fits that strategy. Many kids are familiar with this classic card game, which can be a plus because they can focus more on the words than on learning the rules. Its a great way to keep your kids moving and learning. The fish for words literacy activity is a useful game to play when children are learning to read. Rules are simple! What student wouldnt want the chance to open a bunch of padlocks?! Teacher rolls again. Sink or Spell is an engaging adaptation. For another way to mix word work and strength building for little fingers, just hit the hardware store. Guess the Animal. If you want to score it, you can score a correct process and correct answer each at 5 points. This is an exciting way to mix things up, practice reading comprehension and get kids thinking outside of their seats. It can be used to help them remember the 'tricky words' such as 'was' or ' they': words that cannot be phonetically sounded out. Clipping a clothespin to an answer on a card engages students, avoids a paper worksheet, and acts as yet another fine motor booster all at once! Also, dont miss: 40 Creative and Simple Sight Word Activities for the Classroom. Other decoding games can focus on the mechanics of reading such as reading a word or sentence from left to right. And being corrected privately by one friend may be better for a struggling readers confidence. This massive collection of READING ACTIVITIES covers all essential reading skills for elementary/primary students. Create your own lists of fiction and nonfiction childrens books. If you have a parent helper for this group they could go outside and use chalk to write on cement/play hopscotch/paint with water etc. Flowers are placed in front of the Altria Theater which was the site of a mass shooting after a graduation ceremony, June 7, 2023, in Richmond, Va. Tips from experts on how to help your children with reading and writing at home. Put all the slips of paper in a container, shake it up, and pass it around the room. You may have to write a few words for him or her: Using magnetic letters or Scrabble pieces, form a word with the "ack" pattern. You can control the difficulty of the game by the choice and number of words used: for very beginning readers, choose meaningful words that are visually distinctive: "ghost", "dark", "sister", and keep the number of words low. Theres so much to teach when it comes to literacy. Jenga: Academic-vocabulary terms are written or placed on game pieces. Its a race against your clock to find the words, or they can try to remember them while looking for the others. To make this activity : Have the children write selected words on pieces of card or index cards. Have the children write selected words on pieces of card or index cards. The set includes 5 games: sight words (Fry's first 200 words), vowel teams #1 (long a and long e words), blends, digraphs, and vowel teams #2. This setup makes it super easy to update words as needed. Choose a grade-level text and compile a list of words found in the passage.. Students have to put puzzle pieces together to correctly form words. In this game, youll call your students to the front of the class by their names minus the first letter. Thu., June 22, 2023, 2:00 p.m. - 4:30 p.m. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff. They allow kids to focus on each word, improving accuracy and speed along the way. Decoding games focus on letter sounds and phonemic awareness. Sequencing is a great literacy skill to master! Jennifer Bay-Williams works with preservice and practicing teachers as a professor at the University of Louisville and with teachers all over the world through conferences and workshops. In the midst of the pandemic, Im finding games an essential part of classroom instruction. In the midst of. Once a child is done reading a text or section of a book, have them revisit the main ideas by highlighting or taking notes on the texts biggest themes. The wolf could become a giant rat or wild cat! Real questions from parents and educators, answered by experts. Imagine having cards or game boards or activity sheets or cootie catchers already created for you. If possible, start with a word he or she already knows in the word family. Thumbs up, thumbs down (or the higher energy variation stand up, sit down) is a great game to keep your students engaged., Check reading comprehension when you ask students to give a thumbs up if a statement about a recently read story is true, or a thumbs down if its false. Create your own booklists from our library of 5,000 books! When students think theyve run out of ideas, take this step to help them push forward. These activities are designed to get kids moving and thinking beyond the page. Many kids are familiar with this classic card game, which can be a plus because they can focus more on the words than on learning the rules. We all know how important a love of reading is for future learning. As follow-up, I can ask partners to describe how their two examples are alike (comparing is so important in math learning) or focus on nonexamples (What problems dont fit a strategory?). At Teach Starter, we have a large collectionof comprehension activities and textsthat would be useful at this station. Though many kids enjoy a good princess or dragon story, others will prefer non-fiction books.. The children choose the beginning of a well loved story and then continue it creating a new ending. If necessary, read along with him or her, saying the letter name and stressing the initial sound of the word. Find and cut out small pictures of familiar objects from magazines, old workbooks, catalogues. You must have JavaScript enabled to use this form. 1: Thumbs Up Game This first activity is a classic classroom game that high school students love to play! Your kids will love seeing these stories come to life with your words, and youll all share a good laugh. Looking for reading activities can sometimes be daunting so you have to the right place for all of your literacy needs! Since you are most familiar with the text, you can keep the flow going during the dramatic moments. Sometimes it was reading a small passage with a parent/teacher aide and then answering questions relating to the comprehension strategy for that week. Comprehension strategies are an important focus in any classroom literacy program. Try to find several pictures that start with the same letter, such as book, bed, basket, boy; snake, sun, skate, slide, etc. This gives them a sense of ownership. I would use an instructional text (a challenging level reader) which enabled the studentsto apply known and newly taught readingstrategies. These 33 literacy activities will help stimulate your child and lay a solid foundation for their future learning. Oy! Other educational activities and tools to help learning online in the classroom. Charades Charades is an activity that's ready to shake off its dusty, Victorian-parlor-game status and take on new life in the classroom. Have some artistic students? So having a slew of literacy activities and games makes the teaching of literacy so much easier. Then, students find a partner and talk through how to solve their own problem (or alternatively, talk through how to solve their partners problem). They win by using all of their 10 chips.. Keywords Yet another take on a dice-rolling center, this one is so easy to prep and customize for different kiddos needs. Kids this age still need to play! The best literacy centers build autonomy, help students practice key skills, and free you up to teach small groups or give support elsewhere. When you send it in, let me know if I can use your real name if its selected or if youd prefer remaining anonymous and have a pseudonym in mind. Make it a race to see which column wins or make it a fill-the-board challenge. Its a variation of popcorn reading to help minimize reading anxiety, and it gives kids the power to pass it on after spending a short time reading., Sometimes trying to get the whole class to read together is just too much. Flexibility is a neglected component of fluency! Theres something special about listening to a book being read out loud. Easy to use and lots of fun! I have suggested that the children themselves are involved in making the games. Students pull a block, read the word, define it and/or use it in a sentence, and then place it on the topmost level. Empower your teachers and improve learning outcomes. Invite your child to help you create words in a sandbox or take a stick and dig a letter into the dirt., Older kids can simply take their reading outside. The games vary from simple letter and word card games that are well known and easy to learn, such as Memory, Snap, Go Fish and Uno, to board games, based on particular concepts, and multi-use boards that can be used to reinforce the learning of any letters, words or sentences, using personalised cards (templates provided). From posters to word walls and games of I spy, literacy learning happens all around my classroom. The game reinforces adding and subtracting decimals, but the students love the shopping and choosing aspect. Firstly, place your students into ability groups. Use simple apps that help you do all kinds of useful things. Prodigy English is ready to explore! In my early years classroom, we focused on one strategy a week using a variety of activities. From print awareness to comprehension, Reading 101 Course Take turns reading chapters from a favorite story, or just read to your child. Have students do a scavenger hunt in your classroom for specific sounds. Print out some blank Bingo cards, or prefill them for students and have a whole class game of Bingo. On the grouping posters, I used blue tack when sticking the names on each poster to make it easier to swap kids around if needed. Literacy activities and games for your classroom, These work well for CVC words, consonant blends, and practice with other concepts. Get more ways to help kids love learning with Prodigy English, a brand-new learning adventure! See below for a selection of resources you can access for free. The figures from Minecraft can be printed in color on 10 by 10 or 5 by 10 grids. Once they find it, have them circle it in a specific color, or circle and number, then report back to you for word #2.. The fish for words literacy activity is a useful game to play when children are learning to read. Who do they meet? We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. The other player then searches the room for an item with that number of syllables. Players take turns drawing a card from a player to their left. Here are six games parents or tutors can use to help young readers practice word recognition, spelling patterns, and letter-sound knowledge. Sign us up. When planning the activities it is important to work out how much extra help you can get during this time. Payback : Payback nudges students to think about how to succeed in college without taking on excessive student debt. You can reach her at molly@drmollyness.com, www.drmollyness.com, or @drmollyness on Twitter: Elementary educators know how important it is to infuse fun into your classroom routinesand we know time is precious. Retrieved May 12, 2009, from http://www.bankstreet.edu/literacyguide/games.html. Classroom ideas, free printables, and great teacher ideas right here. Playing games is a great way to provide additional practice with early reading skills. Join us for a lively discussion about the ways that technology is being used to improve schools and how it is falling short. The trickiest part of making cootie catchers is putting the words, pictures, and sounds in the right places. Yes, this is an old standby, but wait a muffin tin?! For example Little Red riding Hood could become Big Blue Riding Hood and the story could take place in a big city instead of a wood. Use a label maker or printing labels to adapt a Jenga game into a literacy-rich version of Tower Tumble. Updated and adapted from: Sample Games. Help the child think of other words that have this pattern. Math should be fun. If your students are a fan of PBS Kids programming, be sure to check out the PBS Kids gaming app. Youll need cards with your target words on them. Here are six games parents or tutors can use to help young readers practice word recognition, spelling patterns, and letter-sound knowledge. Wed., June 21, 2023, 2:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m. The kids will love to make a character puppet from the story and then join up with other kids to give the rest of the class a show! Kids try to get sets of 4 words that match. Poems, nursery rhymes, and jump rope jingles are a great resource for early readers. After your child is reading on their own, theres still plenty to learn. Students have to put puzzle pieces together to correctly form words. Use the analogy of the classic toy that grows and shrinks to help children practice stretching words to spell them or blending sounds to make words. Or provide a full list from the beginning and let them work individually. The next time Wood plays, she'll use Whiteboard.fi instead of Blackboard Collaborate, a free virtual whiteboard. For example, Stacy becomes tacy and Roland becomes oland. Where do they go next? Explore a selection of PDF resources curated for Free Members. PBS offers a huge variety of reading and English learning games based around their most popular shows. Im taking a break from finishing the series on teacher observations and, instead, sharing this series on classroom-learning games. This is a really cool, fun game for teaching vocabulary. These 10 games are perfect for students who need to have a little fun or if you're looking to add a little gamifying to your classroom lesson plans. The activities varied from week to week, however, I had 6 main activity centers: The writing station varied from week to week. Thank you for these ideas! 1. This is a great way to fortify knowledge of place value because students are required to use place-value language on each of their turns. Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on April 8, 2018 - 7:54am. This would work great as a relay race! Have the child analyze the book, highlighting the most important themes. If they do not match, the cards are replaced face down and the next player takes a turn. If the opponent does not have a match, he or she says "Go Fish" and the player draws from the remaining deck of cards, and the next player takes a turn. Try the following, for example, for words in the same family as the word black: Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack Have students retell the story that was read aloud with pictures. Draw Me: Students practice and apply knowledge of academic-vocabulary terms by drawing visuals of the terms and allowing players to guess the term. Focusing on just one set of facts at a time, students roll a 12-sided dice or find the sum of two six-sided dice, then they multiply their number by 6, 7, 8, or 9 depending on the game board theyve chosen. If the opponent has a matching card, it is given over, and the first player takes another turn. They then try and record the word on their piece of paper by sounding out the syllables. At the end of the session the teacher checks words for accuracy. Select ten to 20 words from a book (or books) the child is reading. Grab some index cards and add rhyming words. This fun literacy game will get those brains ready for even more learning! Pinpoint the problem a struggling reader is having and how to help, Reading Interventions Make a list of five to ten clues leading to different locations around the classroom. All these activities can be adapted to words and stories you want re-enforcing in your classroom. Choose your childs favorite things to keep the game fun and exciting. Sentence trees are terrific for building fluency in younger readers. Free literacy teaching resources Browse reading activities and lesson ideas for a range of topics that will make teaching literacy and English more accessible and engaging for your students. The more help you can get during this time the better it is for you and your students. The goal was to sink your opponents ships using horizontal and vertical coordinates. When teaching literacy, in order to differentiate the learning of their students, most teachers will plan and develop weekly literacy groups to meet the needs of each ability level, using a variety of literacy skills and activities. This is another classic game, sometimes called Memory. Let the kids guess who youre calling up, then have them decode the missing letter., You can do the same thing for objects, or drop middle letters for older children. Why I like this game: It connects visual representation to multiplication facts and helps students see commutativity. [you will need more vowels than consonants]. Students play in pairs, so both players get folders. Kids try to get sets of 4 words that match. If the child has trouble recognizing a word, say the word do not ask the child to "sound out" the word. Teacher Tam. These quick and fun end of year classroom activities will help you finish off your year just right! Whether you ask students to sight words, letters, pictures or words by phonetic pattern, theres just something about a trash can with a swinging lid that makes the task much more exciting! So if the word is furious, a child might catch the ball, see the prompt under their right thumb is Give an antonym for the word, and answer happy before tossing the ball to a friend. Turns out a plastic spoon is perfectly sized and shaped to help little hands swap beginning letters! cat , hat, bat, sat. When they find the words, they can mark them out. Read more from this blog. Winners are the last ones still playing. If it is based on who knows more, or is faster, or any other personal attribute, then this is a . Membership starts with access to over 20 downloadable PDF products (at a value of more than $150 USD). Great for: PreK to grade 3. Creating a fun, literacy-rich classroom is a win-win, especially when you infuse games into those found moments throughout the day. ut Fluency in Mathematics Teaching and Learning, Every Minute Matters: 40+ Activities for Literacy-Rich Classroom Transitions, Classroom Management Q&As: Expert Strategies for Teaching, The 11 Most Popular Classroom Q&A Posts of the Year, Student Motivation & Social-Emotional Learning, Challenging Normative Gender Culture in Education, Twitter list including all contributors to this column. Need inspiring teaching ideas? The child with the most sets is the winner. Tips on finding great books, reading nonfiction and more, Why Some Kids Struggle Paste or draw simple pictures on one set of cards; and on the other set, print initial consonants to go with the pictures. Reading aloud as a class is a great way to keep kids engrossed in a story. 2. No matter the topic, do your best to listen intently and congratulate them on their reading skills.. When teaching starts to feel like a drag, or the kids are fighting their instruction, revisit this article. If you are looking for even more fun literacy ideas, check out this blog about Writing Workshop or this one with Funny Read-Alouds ready to go! Students answer whichever question their thumb lands on when the ball heads their way. You cant get much simpler than the setup of this crowd-pleasing partner game. For students who like to get up and move, acting can be the ideal way to demonstrate how well they understand the lesson. Younger children can be helped by being given sequenced pictures of different stories and choosing 2 from each then putting them together to form their own creation. A special kind of bed, their favorite foods, or a place for their pet to stay are all things to consider. Once they find it, have them circle it in a specific color, or circle and number, then report back to you for word #2. Hit up the dollar store and buy inflatable beach balls. She is the author of over a dozen books, including two books with Corwin Press FiguringOut Fluency in Mathematics Teaching and Learning, K-8 and EverythingYou Need for Mathematics: I love games. Reading Rockets is a national multimedia project that offers a wealth of research-based reading strategies, lessons, and activities designed to help young children learn how to read and read better. Pictures appear, and students figure out how they are connected! Add words to the blocks (sight words or vocabulary words), and then let students create sentences or even a story using blocks. Outside is also a great place to practice reading and letter writing. This is awesome! Children are timed to see how many words they can make in 1 minute. Tie a piece of string to one end of several sticks and add a magnet to the end. Vowel Teams Got You Down? K-3 professional development course, Looking at Writing The spinning wheel uses a piece of card on a split pin making it easy to spin around to display each group and their literacy stations for the day. Students get to choose their adventure in reading in the storybook adventure or create their own story in story creator. And they lived happily ever after. Today, as I select or create games, here is what I consider. Going to try these ideas with my 7 year old boy who is struggling to read. A good game of Jenga cant be beat! Scavenger Hunt This activity teaches children how important reading is without the activity being focused specifically on reading. To help group my students, I used a variety of assessment piecesincluding reading levels, comprehension assessments, basic phonemic awareness and writing samples. Students are given a recording card with strategies listed and a blank cell to write in an example problem. Having fun while learning is always to the students benefit. NO PREP REQUIRED! If players struggle with finding 5 or 6 syllable objects they can add an adjective to the front of the word ie. The second trickiest part is folding them, but a video walks you through it pretty quickly and my students seem to know how to do it. Tue., June 13, 2023, 2:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m. Remember to review the word families you've chosen to work on periodically by playing some of the other games described above. Having a slew of literacy activities and games makes teaching so much easier. Find letters or words on a list and mark them with a tool that children love. Create a free account to save your favorite articles, follow important topics, sign up for email newsletters, and more. Students have to define the vocabulary word. If you need to review for an upcoming test, a round of question roulette is a great (and interactive!) Instead of matching pairs, you can use rhyming pairs: look, book; dark, park. There are so many fun phonics games and engaging activities that you could do here! Sensory binsare awesome for play, science, and more, but if youre struggling to fit them into your day, turning one into a search-and-find literacy center is a win-win option! My students love cootie catchers (you may call them fortune tellers or chatterboxes), so they are a great way to practice phonics. Even better, snuggle in together and discover a new favorite with your child. In fact with the skeleton of the story they know they can change as little or much of it as they want. They serve two (and many more) purposes: engagement in learning and distraction from COVID. Puzzles can have just the word parts on them OR they can have a picture at the top with the word below. What are the Super Six Comprehension Strategies? Required fields are marked *. Share them over at ourWeAreTeachers HELPLINE group on Facebook. Literacy activities and games for your classroom Here are some of my favorite literacy activities and games: 1. fun phonics games and engaging activities, 16 Hands-On Phonics Games for the Classroom, Tips and Activities for Teaching Letters and Sounds, 25 Tips and Resources for Teaching Phonics in the Classroom, Sentences (parent help was used here if available), Comprehension Skills (teacher aide if available). Students use the dough to make letters that they then put on the mat as they say and blend the sounds, but since the mats are laminated, students can also write on them with a dry erase marker. I really think that the group of kids, remedial and autistic, will really grab the picture-word association. Great ideas for games that can help kids work on their language skills! (If using a sheet of paper, print only two or three letters per sheet. All of these games can easily be played in the classroom, with some even offering a self-paced version that is ideal for independent learning in the classroom. We have more than 5,000 books in our library! Bingo This is another game that is infinitely adaptable. Next, tell all other students to put their heads on their desks, close their eyes, and put their thumbs up. Education Week has published a collection of posts from this blog, along with new material, in an e-book form. Have students label the components of a picture while they work on invented spelling or, as above, using descriptive language. Learning to read can be a frustrating journey for some. The reasons why some kids struggle with reading, Target the Problem! You can find all the updated lists here, and here are a few key ones: The Best Online Learning Gamesto Play During Distance Learning, The Best Ideasfor Using Gamesinthe ESL/EFL/ELL Classroom, The Best Websitesfor Creating Online Learning Games. Students have grid paper (e.g., 25 by 15). Teaching literacy is a huge undertaking. At each location hide a stamp, stickers or a different colored marker. WeAreTeachers HELPLINE group on Facebook. Students play memory, but instead of finding picture matches, they have to find rhyme matches! Extra points can be earned by dictating or writing sentences with the rhyming words. When planning to play one of these games, choose words to use from books the child is reading or has read recently. This is Dressing Up a Sentence Activity is a simple idea that could be used to encourage students to add more detail to their sentences. Other times it was an activity/game/match-up task that reinforced the weekly comprehension strategy. Here you'll find a free random number generator, classroom timer, a social studies game, and a huge trivia game that covers 5 subjects. The game ends when the tower tumbles! Secret codes make anything more fun. At this station, I was able to sit and listen to every student read to me at least once a week. A cozy spot dedicated to reading can add joy to the activity. Sometimes we just need to give the students a little bit of fun. Classroom Strategy: List-Group-Label. So smart. The pair-exchange is great peer teaching, active movement, built in accountability, and 100 percent participation. Everyone will have fun playing or watching these puppet shows. The one with the most words is the winner. From posters to word walls and games of I spy, literacy learning happens all around my classroom. Play continues until all the cards are matched, except for the one odd card. Tech Is Everywhere. You draw two circles on a board or projector screen and label one "Yes" and the other "No." Revolutionize student success! Take turns turning up two cards at a time and reading the words aloud. Each pair is provided with a giant die and a recording sheet. Don't miss our expert-led webinar demonstrating practical ways AI tools will elevate learning experiences. Play until all the cards are matched. Continue the game until the cards are all used up. How can I make my literacy learning more fun? Prepare word cards with families of words that emerge from the child's reading: night, light, tight; went, bent, sent; hat, cat, bat. Sometimes it was free writing using a writing stimulus, other times it linked to the text type focus we were learning about. This is a great time to utilize finger puppets, following along with a finger as you sound the words out together. Larry Ferlazzo is an English and social studies teacher at Luther Burbank High School in Sacramento, Calif. With Fortnite, print the map in either one or four quadrants, and students can work to find the coordinates of given places and their reflections, etc. Keep giving clues until they guess correctly. And my collection provides different ways for my students to practice becauseit gets boring doing the same old thing all the time. Make fidget spinners work for you with this fun idea thats adaptable for any words. (Children may help by copying the words you write.) Hide different treasures (cards, small balls and beanies) in the classroom or schoolyard. I am also creating a Twitter list including all contributors to this column. Using a permanent marker, write open-ended prompts on each section of the ball. 2 ~ 4 Corners Number the corners of the classroom from 1 to 4. (The child may be able to help you by copying the words you write.). Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles. Expand what's possible for every student. Butterflies are great subjects for a variety of classroom lessons including pollination, healthy ecosystems and metamorphosis. You can use it to practice specific sounds or specific words. The trickiest part of making cootie catchers is putting the words, pictures, and sounds in the right places. Play rhyming games to teach about the patterns in words. Remember the childhood favorite Battleship, where you would place your plastic ships in pegs without your opponent seeing? The first person to get 4 in a row wins. For commercial use, please contact the author or publisher listed. Grab those Duplo blocks and make a literacy game out of them! Meet your favorite authors and illustrators in our video interviews. Lindsay has 18 years experience working as a PreK-2 teacher, literacy specialist, curriculum developer, and education writer. The Big Questions Teachers Are Asking Themselves Right Now. If they get it wrong, they have to pull again! Thanks to Shannon, Jennifer, Molly, and Sheniqua for contributing their thoughts! This classic game works so well as a partner center. The player who holds that card at the end wins the game. Typically, I choose the 6s, 7s, 8s, or 9s to set up the board due to the challenging nature of these facts. For example, if you were working on ck, students might write clock, block, locker. Give each student or pair of students a piece of text, then speak the first secret word. Kids are never too old to hear a story read aloud. Not all reading happens in the classroom! To start, I have this great game for Morning Meetings that really wakes up our students brains and gets them to start thinking critically. Simply make a 10 x 10 grid, with numbers running horizontally and letters running vertically. Each rotation lasted approximately 20 minutes with 10 minutes for transition and feedback. Remember to choose a word pattern that is useful and important to the student and that relates to something that he or she has read or will read. Including environmental print and picture cards allows even emergent readers to make interesting sentences! To play, first, choose three students to come up to the front of the class. Here is a great one for small groups or stations. Today, Shannon Jones, Jennifer Bay-Williams, Molly Ness, and Sheniqua Johnson share their favorites. When I pull out a matching activity sheet one day and cootie catchers or bingo the next day and a word puzzle to wrap up the week on Friday, I know that we are practicing the same skills but it feels different to my students. She is a focus teacher for students in kindergarten through 5th grades. You know exactly where to go for on-demand teaching advice, resources, and materials that save you time. The treasure hunt reading comprehension game does just the trick. Try to pair a confident but patient reader with those who need some extra help and watch them both learn to succeed. For five months, Jeremy Winkler's students at Hatfield Elementary in the Laurel Highlands School District cared for 160 . 7. Curriculum-aligned resources to engage and inspire your class. Shannon Jones is a 15-year educator working in Wheaton, Md. Have students stand in a line, or they can play during stations. My favorite games happen to be fun, but they are my favorites because of the opportunities for students to engage in meaningful practice, show off their good reasoning, and learn with and from each other, realizing along the way that everyone can do math. My favorite games involve mathematical reasoning. If a players opponent has a letter in that box, the opponent says, Hit and tells the other player what letter is in the box. Get the latest education news delivered to your inbox daily. with silver buttons, buttons, buttons Whats something funny that could happen. Mostofthe time, in my class, we already had apps ready to go, so that the students could pick their favourite app and develop the skill required. Oh, yeah, and kids love it (just today I received such a message from a teacher in summer school): Strategories: This is not a misspelling but an adaptation of a popular game. How to make this literacy game. in my store, but there is an even better way to have literacy activities and so many more resources at your fingertips: Your email address will not be published. This works great for CVC words and can be adapted to focus on digraphs, consonant blends, or other types of words. Blending and segmenting, CVC words, alternate spellings for long e or long a or any other sound theres so much to teach when it comes to literacy, and Im passionate about doing it right. Take a look at this awesome list of 10 fun literacy games to use today! ET. Ask them what they think may happen next, or at the close of the book invite them to create a completely different ending. Questions about reading, writing, dyslexia and more, Classroom StrategiesResearch-based teaching strategies, Reading Basics Who doesnt love a good puppet show? You have come to the right place. This spin on a classic partner game is adorable, effective, and so easy to prep! Just be sure to prepare your words ahead of time to avoid any slip-ups!, Grab a few beach balls from your local dollar store and get your classroom moving. Works with all text and media types. Be sure to give the student a chance to go back to a book, poem, or other texts where he or she can apply this new reading skill. 10 Easy and Effective Literacy Games For The Classroom, 5 Easy and Educational Math Games For All Students, 7 Fantastic Fun Friday Ideas To Use With Your Students. Puppet shows or story boards are also excellent ways of. Rio, from A Month-to-Month Guide: Fourth-Grade Math by Lainie Schuster or the game Knock It Off are games that focus on the most challenging of the multiplication facts. As students choose pieces to remove from the tower, they must define words or answer questions, such as, word problems. 5 games to help students with research and study skills 1. Magnetic letters are perfect for moving around while trying to solve a scrambled word. Students have a deck of like or unlike fractions. This Guided Reading Strategies checklistcan be used to keep a record of each student. As they bring the object back, reinforce the sound that letter makes. Help them grasp grammar concepts by having them stand up when you say an adjective word or sit down if you say a noun., Its a fun way to keep their bodies and brains working., When youre teaching letter sounds, its fun to get creative. During partner reading, each child will get more time to practice their skills. Kids often memorize nursery rhymes long before they learn to read. The Key to Greater Creativity? Whether your child is a baby or fully grown, its always a good time to read together. 17 literacy strategies to use in the classroom. Write vocabulary words, sight words, or homophones on each block. The games should also be chosen or designed to promote the child's sense of competence and success. For a more challenging game, include some words that are less distinctive: "when", "what", "this", "that", but be careful not to overwhelm the child. Comprehension questions: Whats your favorite character in the book and why?, Prompts for vocabulary: Use it in a sentence or Heres a synonym. (For beginning readers or younger children, make sure the patterns are not too similar: mat, sat, rat; man, can, ran; met, set, bet.) Superintendent 'Devastated' by Deadly, Post-Graduation Shooting, Teachers Are Frustrated by Schools' Scattershot Approach to Instruction, School Shootings This Year: How Many and Where, We Must Encourage Students to Communicate, Evidence-Based Strategies to Boost Student Engagement and Success, Leverage New Funding Sources with Data-Informed Practices, ChatGPT & Education: 8 Ways AI Improves Student Outcomes. Have everyone write down a test-related question on a slip of paper. After reading a book about being sad, for example, start with the word "cry" and then follow with "fry", "try", and "wry". The player with the most pairs wins. Watch on. They take turns flipping over a card, then they compare the size of their fractions to determine a winner for each round. When kids catch the ball, they read the prompt underneath and share their answer, before gently tossing it to a classmate. Here are some of our favorite activity posts for reading, math, and more! It happens at desks with literacy activity sheets and in spelling and literacy centers with literacy games and cootie catchers and at home with review sheets or games to help students consolidate skills. When all the fish are caught and placed correctly, have the child "read" the pictures under each heading. Print each word clearly and boldly on separate 3x5 inch index cards, making pairs of each word. Sheniqua Johnson is a language-acquisition specialist in north Texas: The classroom-learning games I enjoy the most allow students to be interactive while applying their knowledge or having the opportunity to review academic-vocabulary terms, problem-solving skills, or concepts. Lines and paragraphs break automatically. free membership. September 7, 2022 // by Kimberly Lange It is important to stimulate your child and students even before they start going to school. To add to the element of chance, have other game directions on the board, such as "take another turn", "go back 2 spaces", etc. Help Your Child Who's Struggling with Math, Reading activities for parents & children, Other educational activities to help kids learn. You may want to laminate it. To get them involved in the fun, ask them to do their own silly voice! You can mention physical characteristics, some of their best friends, or things that happen to them. Literacy games in the classroom don't have to be unmanageable. Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more. 40 Creative and Simple Sight Word Activities for the Classroom, This Free Guide From the Smithsonian Will Change the Way Your School Teaches Science, A Teachers Guide to Digital Stress and Social Media Addiction. A favorite game for pre-readers is to say a letter and have students find an object that starts with that letter. Which makes them some of the easiest early literacy activities you can start with!

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