Fluency Practice Games

Imagine a robot reading a classic children’s book: perhaps Where the Wild Things Are or The Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog. The robot’s voice sounds choppy, slow, and expressionless; and oddly enough, it reminds you of the way your first grader reads!

Many early readers are stuck in the “robot stage.” They can recognize and read many words, but their pace is slow and the expression isn’t quite right. In short: they haven’t developed reading fluency.

Today, we’re rescuing you from the robots. We’ll explain reading fluency, outline why it’s important, and offer five reading games that help youngsters practice this essential reading skill.

What does reading fluency mean?

Reading fluency means the ability to read smoothly and accurately with speed, expression, and confidence. If you compare a kindergartner to a literate adult, you’ll probably notice that the kindergartner reads choppily and slowly.

Why is reading fluency important?

Reading fluency is important because it’s essential for comprehension. If children are slowed down by decoding each word, they have less brain power to focus on the meaning of the words and story.

As they build their vocabulary of sight words, learn to decode, and explore more book genres, young book lovers will blossom into fluent readers.

But how do we get there? The answer is lots of practice, lots of reading, and plenty of games.

Yes, you heard that right. Fun reading games are not only helpful, but 100% necessary when working toward the goal of reading fluency. Here are five reading fluency activities to introduce at-home, in the classroom, or even during the drive to soccer practice.

1. Speed Read

When it comes to any educational activity, it’s important to remember that accuracy is always more important than speed. To achieve fluency, however, students need to gradually increasing their reading pace. Even as adults, some people read slower than others: the goal is to become a smoother, more confident reader.

For this reading game, you’ll just need a set of flashcards with decodable words. Lay one or a few cards out and have the student(s) read as many words as they can in a minute. This can be done in groups and doesn’t need to be competitive! Simply document the student’s word count each day so they can see their progress over time.

2. Echo Reading

Echo… echo! Many youngsters find it challenging to read with the correct expression or emotion. In this reading game, an adult reads a passage aloud with lots of expression; then, the student echoes their reading and tries to match the expression used.

3. Poetry Party

Poems are a sneaky way to incorporate creativity and reading fluency practice into a standard lesson. Rhyming poems are perfect for building fluency: they help students see and hear the relationships between words in a sentence.

Similar to echo reading, have students read poems aloud after a teacher recites them; and in older classrooms, they can write and read their own!

4. Look Ahead

It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a WORD! Teach students to “look ahead” or preview the next word in the sentence with this simple reading game. To gamify this concept, you can create a silly worksheet or have kids draw arrows to the words they’ll need to preview. See below for an example!

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5. Read Like You Speak

This is a simple strategy to avoid robot reading. Encourage kids to read like they are talking to a friend or loved one. To create the right “atmosphere” for reading, they can practice in a familiar space at home in front of a parent, sibling, or even stuffed animals. As an audience member, encourage the student to speak in phrases and stop for breaths - just like they would in an everyday conversation.

With these five reading games at your disposal, you can help your students increase their reading fluency - and bid goodbye to robot reading.

Take-Aways:

Reading fluency is the ability to read with expression, speed, and accuracy. Fluency is essential for reading comprehension, and both are building blocks for lifelong literacy.
There are a variety of reading games to help kids stretch their reading muscles and improve reading fluency, including:
- Speed Reading
- Echo Reading (to practice emotion)
- Poetry Party (to practice rhyming!)
- Looking Ahead (at the next word)
- Read Like You Speak

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Phonics reading Games

Introduction:

Phonics is the building block to develop effortless reading among children with fluency, phonemic awareness, vocabulary, and reading comprehension. Breaking the words into their constituent sounds aids the children in understanding and build up their literacy skills. Phonic reading games and activities are designed to assist in developing fluency in young students.

Phonic sounds assist the children in identifying and recognizing the alphabet more quickly and easily. Identification and reading of phonics is an integral part of children’s language development and learning. If learning is combined with games, it becomes more engaging and interactive for the child.

Interesting reading games for young learners will help them grab the concepts and sounds easily. Henceforth, today we will discuss some of the phonic reading games for young learners. Let’s begin:

Begin with the anchor Charts:

It is rather the best way to teach tough concepts simply. Keeping them around the students will enable them to identify the letters with sounds independently. When we talk about phonics, there is much to learn about them. Post anchor charts in the classrooms to guide them to get familiar with the new letters religiously. This is also a way to develop confidence among them.

Beginners love to put words to the test both in terms of silent E on end and without. This equally helps them to memorize some of the basic yet important rules such as silent E, vowels blends, consonants, and much more. The different sound of the letter C is tricky, and thus, students may struggle with it. Therefore, use the anchor charts to recognize such words falling in this category. They also get familiar with the hard and soft letters like C and G.

Color the Starting sounds:

The majority of the children begin learning phonics by mastering the initial sound of words. Making your kids color in the starting words with the matching sounds will help them learn new concepts. Therefore, try the fun coloring pages.

When a child looks at the letters and says their sounds, similarly, they see the picture and color the initial word, which develops the learning of the first word. This ultimately assists in developing reading skills go the future as well.

Construct the chart of beginning sounds:

Beginning sounds charts is the ideal resource to make rhyme or while working on word families with the young learners. Here it is significant to note that for rhyming words, it is vital to know the beginning sounds in the whole process.

One of the easiest ways is to utilize the chart to take, for example, ‘an’ and then go through the chart like b-an, c-an, t-an, p-an, f-an, r-an, v-an, m-an, and much more. The charts not only help to get familiar with the rhyming words, but it is also a 1 page and a simple resource to assist the kids with spelling at the starting level.

These charts include almost 55 different beginning sounds with comprehensive word making. These charts may include consonants, blends, digraphs, even the harder sounds.

Slap the letter sounds to recognize:

It is a fun game for beginners that involve great attention-catching element as kids physically get involved in them. Slapping with a fly swatter will help them in recognition of the phonics. It is an equally interesting activity that holds the attention of the young learners as they learn the concepts while playing with the letters and alphabets.

Walk the word game:

This is one of the best activities for active or hyperactive learners. This makes them happy and keeps moving while getting used to the new alphabet. By doing this, kids get to use their whole bodies to practice identifying the sounds along with blending them. This is one of the simple and easy play games.

Write the words in sidewalk chalk, and then walk, hop or skip along with them. Ask the child to begin at the side you begin reading at. After that, make them step on every letter and say the sound. This is pretty simple but productive to learn new concepts by prompting or testing them during play.

Just swap spelling games:

The basic idea is to begin from the top and spell the very first word with letter tiles. You keep moving on the game board and swap out one letter, for instance, cat to can. Moreover, you can also swap the last letter. If learners pay attention to the letters, they will know which letter is being swapped or exchanged.

Students can move from one box to the other, the change of one letter brings in the new world represented by the picture. This may be a real challenge for the young learners, but mind testing technique to make them learn the words.

Compete at blends and digraphs bingo:

Bingo games are fun that assist them in helping the early readers to master the blends and digraphs. They struggle to differentiate between the blends, vowels, and single consonants.

Conclusion:

With different Online phonic reading games, your child will recognize by just listening to the sounds of the words. Give your child a head start at phonics and reading proficiency with our designed games.

Reading Teacher.com facilitates that young learners will have a blast mastering the toughest and tricky phonic concepts. With the beautiful animation and exciting challenges, the beginners will get involved in them. These kindergarten and 1st-grade phonic reading games are the perfect way to empower your kids with reading skills.

Learning to read is an overwhelming task, especially when letters don’t always make a similar sound. Our collection is developed by professionals to meet the specifications of kindergarten to grade 1 learners. Our sole objective remains to introduce the beginner to the world of letters and sounds and the relationship easily. With audio, visuals, and phonic games, your child will have fundamental reading and spelling skills that will go a long way with him. This strengthens your familiarity as they immerse in delightful animation quest and story problems.

Tag: Reading Games