Reading Improvement Games
Reading instruction includes the teaching of many skills. Kindergarten and first-grade teachers focus on phonics and phonemic awareness abilities like letter-naming, sound recognition and production, and word segmentation. In second through sixth grades, the focus shifts to oral reading fluency and comprehension strategies like predicting, drawing conclusions and summarizing. Teachers in all these grades can use classroom games to reinforce these skills and help their students become better readers.
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Phonics
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Children begin reading by learning the letters of the alphabet and their corresponding sounds. Then they begin putting sounds together to make words. Phonemic awareness games are effective in helping kids improve listening skills. The teacher reads a nursery rhyme or sings a rhyming song then asks the children to identify the sound they heard repeated the most. After they identify the sound, the teacher asks them to think of other words that begin with the same sound. This will improve initial sound fluency and get students accustomed to isolating sounds in words.
Fluency
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Fluency is an important skill that aids comprehension. Fluent readers use expressive voices, pronounce words accurately and maintain a rate of speed that enables them to retain what they read. Children build fluency mainly through reading, but there are games teachers can use in the classroom to help kids recognize sight words and other frequently used phrases. Education.com suggest the game "Oh, No!" The teacher writes words on index cards and places them in a container along with some cards that say "Oh, No!" The teacher should choose high-frequency words or phonetic words from a story recently read in class. Students draw cards and read them quickly. If a child reads the card correctly, she keeps the card. If a student draws an "Oh No!" card, he must return all his cards to the container and start over. The teacher may want to set a timer for 15 minutes; when it sounds, whoever has the most cards is the winner. This game builds automaticity, which children must have to increase fluency.
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Comprehension
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One of the main goals of reading is understanding. Kids have to read for meaning, or they will just be reciting words with no purpose. After the class reads a story, the teacher pairs students and passes out plastic spinners attached to a sheet of paper with a circle drawn and labeled with the question words why, how, where, when, and who. Each child spins and answers the question word with a statement from the story. Teachers can also label the sheet with story element words like plot, setting, characters, and conflict. Instead of pairs, students can form two teams and compete against each other to build comprehension skills.
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References
Resources
- Photo Credit Apple and the alphabet. image by mashe from Fotolia.com
