Elementary school is a period in a child’s life when they learn more readily by applying concepts taught through direct instruction. Turning these concepts into educational games helps reinforce learning. Elementary school students, who are in second or third grade, should be able to gather clues from the words in a table of contents, through looking at the index, by reading the captions under pictures and side-bars. In addition, elementary school students are ready to gather information for meaning by knowing that bold words have special meaning and are important. When an elementary school student is able to perform these reading comprehension tasks, they are able to predict the content. Playing reading comprehension games in elementary school is an effective strategy to help students develop appropriate reading comprehension skills.
Elementary School Educational Games: Matching
A fun kid’s educational game to play, to help students in elementary school read for comprehension, is as simple as developing a matching educational game using pictures and sentences. To develop this educational game, go through magazines and catalogues and cut out pictures of things you want children to study such as: animals doing something, kids playing or doing things, adults working around the house etc. Paste these pictures on 5″ x 7″ note cards. Make as many educational game cards as you can so you can play the matching games with different level of readers. Write a sentence on a note card describing what is going in a picture. Create a sentence card for each educational game picture card. Write the sentences at different reading levels to meet the unique needs of elementary school children.
To play the educational matching game, place 15 picture cards in three rows on the floor. Under these, place the sentence cards that match the pictures. Be sure and place the sentence cards in random order so they do not duplicate the picture card order. Elementary school students play the educational game by choosing a card and matching the sentence to the card. If correct, they keep the pair. If incorrect, they return the cards to the floor. The student with the most matches when all the cards are collected is the winner of the educational game.
Elementary School Educational Games: Holes
The elementary school educational game called “Holes” is based on a reading technique known as the Cloze technique. Basicall,y what the Cloze technique means is- to fill in a missing word(s). Elementary school students are at the age where they love to solve puzzles and the Cloze technique is an educational game puzzle strategy. To prepare for playing this educational game, teachers should develop an educational game worksheet consisting of short (2 to 3 sentences) passages with each having several words omitted. Give each elementary school student a copy of the educational game worksheet and set a time limit for filling in the passages. Have each elementary school student read their passages aloud and have the class vote on whether they used words that made sense in the passage. If so they get a point. The elementary school student with the most points wins the educational game.
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Reference:
- www.trelease-on-reading.com/10-reading-facts-brochure.pdf
- academic.cuesta.edu/acasupp/as/310.HTM
- www.tengrrl.com/tens/016.shtml
