Yeah. You're right. In that first explicit instruction, in that first structured practice opportunity, it does feel a little yuck. And we just have to get through the little bit of yuck to where it's not yuck anymore.
Hi, and welcome back to the Smarter Literacy Podcast from Ascend Smarter Intervention, where we simplify effective literacy instruction so every student gets what they need and every educator gets to breathe a little easier.
I'm Lindsay. And I'm Corey. And today, we're talking about one of our favorite topics, games. And not just for fun, we're diving into why games are one of the most powerful tools that you can use in your literacy instruction.
So when we say games, we don't mean letting kids play a battleship at the end of class. We mean using literacy based games as a strategic way to teach and reinforce those reading skills.
Yeah, I have to admit, when I first started in my intervention role, that's sort of how I viewed games. Like, I really just thought, you know, this is a reward or something to do once that instructional time is complete.
But what I started to realize is that's not it at all. And so what we're going do is we're going to talk about why games matter so much for engagement and how they can actually fit directly into your instructional cycle and why they're one of the easiest ways that you can differentiate for your students.
And let's be honest, reading intervention is tough and sometimes a bit boring. We're asking students to do the very things that they've struggled with the most, and for them, it's really not fun.
Not at all. And here's the thing: students need multiple exposures to these new skills before they stick. So sometimes you may have one concept that you are having to review over and over and over.
But if those exposures look the same every time, it's always a worksheet or it's always a drill, kids start to tune out. And honestly, so do we, right? I mean, I can definitely say I have tuned out. And when I first started in literacy intervention, I was doing the systematic structured literacy lessons. It was so boring. I know you mentioned before it's so boring.
And I was bored out of my mind. And so I can only imagine how my students were feeling because I at least knew, okay, there's a purpose here. And if we can work through all of this, we're gonna get to the end result. But I'm an adult and I was like wanting to, you know, poke my own eyes out. So I just ugh.
Honestly, the same goes for me. I remember when I started as a literacy instructor and I was like, oh my god, is this gonna be the rest of my life? This is so boring. And these four kids, they're gonna hate me. No one's ever gonna think back and be like, oh I remember her fondly as a teacher they're gonna be like no that was the worst time of my life So and I couldn't imagine, you know, being in their seats and, you know, this is hard and boring. Your brain automatically doesn't want to do those things. It tries to move away from things that are not engaging that are hard for you.
So yeah, you're going to get a lot of resistance back from your students.
Absolutely. And I know just speaking of the resistance piece, I had groups of students where it was just like, this is getting squirrelly and I'm having a hard time maintaining their attention. I'm actually having a hard time even getting through all of the activities because they're like, how much longer? How much more of this?
How many words do I have to spell? How much of this? And you think about it, and that makes sense, It's one of those things where you just don't really have the stamina to be able to keep going, like you said, for something that is hard, for something that is not enjoyable. And for many of our students, especially when I was in private literacy intervention early on, this was also after a day of school.
And we have to think about even if it's during the school day, they're doing all of this other work that's also really hard and really taxing. And so as much as I would get frustrated by just we just have to do the work, just focus, I started to realize, okay, I'm not focused either. Yeah.
And I don't know about you, but I remember when I started and I was going through the explicit instruction in my brain, like in my mind, I was thinking this is never going to stick with him.
I just was like, what am I doing? This, they're not gonna remember this. They're gonna walk out the door and forget everything we just went over because nothing at all is appealing to this.
And so that's where I was getting really frustrated too.
Yeah, absolutely. And so I think, honestly, when we think about using games and trying to create that engagement, it is about making some of that a little bit more fun.
It is about giving yourself the opportunity to get more of those repetitions in that you know you're going to need because, for example, if you're teaching TCH, they're going to need more than one worksheet, probably more than two, probably more than three.
And so what you can do is you can start to incorporate in those games in that way. And honestly, it started to make it more fun for me.
I was like, okay, if I can have fun in this, too, then I can get through my day a little bit easier as well. So, it made it more fun for all of us.
Awesome. So let's actually kind of keep talking about that by talking about why games actually work and how this isn't meant to be fluff in your lessons.
Yeah. So again, going back to when I first started, I really did feel like, oh, this is a reward for when we're done. I'm actually cutting into my instructional time, but it'll be worth it to keep them engaged through the process. But to your point, it's not meant to be fluff.
So as we mentioned before, games are gonna boost that engagement. The brain loves novelty. It loves choices. It loves challenge.
And so when kids are playing, they're attentive in ways that they wouldn't be with that worksheet.
And even better, you're pulling in so many executive functioning skills, which is really amazing. And so I know there's lots of different games that we do. But for me, sometimes we'll do things under a time component. So for example, one of the games that I love doing with my kids at the sentence level is that Pictionary, which I know we've talked about before. But we'll read all of the sentences. And then one of the students can go choose. And they've got two minutes to draw their picture because I, one, don't want it to cut too much into my lesson.
But what that does is it requires them to think about, all right, let me think about all my sentences. Let me think if I have a visual imagery for each of those sentences. Let me think about whether I have the drawing skills necessary to create that. That's a big EF for me is that I'm like, I can't draw half of these things because I'm a terrible artist. Many of my kids are not, but I certainly am. And so I'm having to think about what is it that I can actually draw that you'll be able to understand and guess?
And how do I make sure that I stay within the time component and I actually can work within that two minute time frame so I don't spend my whole time on this one little detail of the picture that was irrelevant, really. Because sometimes your kids will do that.
And so that's just a way that they start to learn that over time. And so I think, again, coming back to that engagement, that novelty, that choice, they're able to think about, all right, which sentence am I going to do? And how am I going to show that? And how am I going to make sure that my group or whoever I'm working with is going to be able to guess it?
And so all of a sudden, we're doing all the things we would have asked them to anyway. Do you have a picture in your head? Did you read all the words correctly? But all of a sudden, it's like, oh, I want to do it because I actually have a purpose that's exciting to me.
Right. Absolutely. And I I just have to say games are literally how I've gotten my toughest students to buy in. And I'm not even just talking about my younger students. I'm talking about my middle schoolers and high schoolers because that's originally who I was working with.
And by incorporating those games in and using them after that explicit instruction that I used with them, and all of a sudden they were having fun with it and able to play around with it, they they just ate it up and they no longer struggled to come to my class. Like, they wanted to come to my class. And it also just created this fun atmosphere for both of us. It wasn't just that because, again, I was struggling with that boredom and kinda knowing, okay.
We're gonna play a game in the midst of this. It was fun for both of us. So it really helps with the buy in. Like you were kind of saying too, so I was just I had one of my students last night that we were working on, and we had been working on the EA pattern.
And that was an extremely hard vowel team pattern for her. She was getting very frustrated our previous session.
So I said, you know what? Today, for a review, we're gonna start with a game. We're gonna go over this, and we're gonna play a game with this. Now she still struggles.
Right? Sometimes I had to be like, remember, what are the other two sounds that EA can make? Try it in this word instead because that pattern, that sound didn't work until she would and she would get it. But I will say in the gameplay, she read more words correctly than she did during our lesson, and it's because she was even a little bit motivated.
She wanted to beat me, right? So she wanted to win, and it just was a lot more fun. She had a smile on her face. It wasn't like we were dragging our feet through the mud.
And she even said at the end of it, that felt a lot better. That felt like I got it a lot more. I'm like, great. We're gonna keep doing this.
We're gonna keep reviewing at the beginning of our sessions. We'll play this quick game.
It took, what, five minutes And did.
And then the rest of our session went so smoothly. Absolutely. And I think you made a great point there that this is going to be helpful for students of all ages, right? Because I think so often we feel like, oh, once we've got those middle school, high school students, they don't want to do this anymore.
They do. They do. They do. They still want to do it. And again, even for your students who maybe do fine in the lesson, I have a couple students that I'm thinking of that actually work pretty nicely through the lesson, but they look forward to the game.
They always ask when I set out, here are The five primary things that we're going to accomplish today, they always ask, is there a game? Are we gonna be able to do a game? And I think that's part of it, like you said, of them wanting to come back and starting to associate that reading can be fun And that there actually can be joy involved in that process. Because for many of the students that we work with, like you mentioned earlier, this is hard for them.
And if this is one of the hardest things that they do, what we wanna start to do is we want to create sort of a new neural pathway there that almost associates that tough work with some fun. Yes. And so I think that that just speaking to your student that you're talking about is something where originally she would have felt like, oh, I'm encountering this pattern. It's hard.
I'm frustrated.
Now she's like, oh, hold on. This is fun, and I can do hard things Yes. Especially when it's fun. Yes. So I think that's such such a great point.
And another important reason to use games is that games give you the repetition, like you said, Corey, that students need without that burnout. And a game like Word War might have students read thirty or forty words in a session, but they don't even notice that because they're playing and they're having fun.
Yeah, absolutely. And sometimes what I'll do, especially like you said, if we're going to start with a review and we're going to incorporate something like that, if we're going to do we do word war, for example, where you're reading the words and then whoever has the higher number gets to keep them. And sometimes what we'll also do is I'll say, we're just going to play for three So we've got three minutes, we're setting our clock, and we've got two goals here. So your first goal is to beat me, right, or to beat whoever, right, to get the highest number of cards if we're playing in a group.
Same thing. You want to get the most cards at the end. But our next goal as a group is to see if we can get through this whole deck before our timer goes out. Because sometimes what I will say is that and somebody asked this.
What do you do when kids start to get really competitive and kind of mad when you win or when somebody else wins and it actually starts to create some some contention there? One, I think that's still important. It's still some of that executive functioning that we want to work through. And we that's something else, a different skill set almost that we can help to be supporting as educators.
But sometimes having that collaborative goal too of, hey, as a whole collaborative group, we're gonna see if we can't get this done. And the good thing about that is if you know that you've got some slower readers, you can just extend that time a little bit more so that you're giving the best opportunity for we should be able to get this done in that time. It keeps that focus and that attention. But also, you're building in some fluency work there and and allowing everybody to sort of win in that way.
So I would say something even if I win and get more more cards or whatever. I'm like, but we beat our time goal. It's like, yes. Okay.
Great. We at least got our collaborative game goal.
Right.
And I will say, especially when it's I tend to have a student one on one. Sometimes I will kind of be a little bit competitive with them. Be like, you know what? Today I'm gonna win.
And they'll be like, oh no, you're not. And I'm like, let's see. And sometimes with certain games, it's just luck of the draw or how you roll the dice. Right?
But just kinda getting them a little bit fired up and getting them excited about winning.
All of a sudden, again, in word war, some of those words are longer. They have longer syllables. And in our sessions, my students just wanna try reading them as fast as possible. Don't usually get them right. But in the game, they wanna get it right because then they get the card.
And sometimes I'll even be like, oh what's my word and everything and they read it too and stuff. I'm like, okay you can yeah you can take them both and stuff.
Just fun.
Again, you don't wanna go overboard, but you can kind of create, like, this little competitive spirit, and it gets them even more excited.
So that's just something I like to do with my students.
Absolutely. No, I think that you make such a good point too of having that that competitive piece. And it's important that they learn to manage some of that. And that's where, again, where that executive functioning or that emotional regulation piece comes in.
And so I will use that opportunity to say, Oh, you know what? If after a game it felt like, oh, that got a little heated, we might just take a quick minute to say, oh, you know what's interesting? We wanted to win, and that was our goal. And when we started to feel like we weren't gonna reach our goal, that got frustrating, and that's normal.
Yeah. That's normal. And we want to make sure that we're always kind and and appropriate in that way. But I think, again, it's it's fun, and and I would never say that if kids get too competitive.
We've had educators ask, should I just stop doing the games? No. No. No. This is still so important.
It is so fun and it's worth working through any of those potential little roadblocks or little hurdles as in.
And I have to say that by incorporating games early on in your instruction, so meaning when you first get a student, right, a student's new to you, maybe it's the beginning of the school year, maybe they're coming to you new, don't be afraid to incorporate those games early on because what I found is that by playing these games with my students, I'm really building some rapport with them, and I'm getting them to open up and trust me a bit more.
They don't see me as, again, that kind of unfun teacher, oh gosh, you again. They're looking at me and we're kind of sometimes we're talking through our games. Right? And they're telling me something like we read a word and that reminds them of something and they tell me an interesting fact about themselves. And so especially in the classroom setting, because again, I was working in a middle school, and my students actually had built into their schedule that they came and saw me, so I was a class on their schedule.
And again, it was a very small class. I had no more than three kids, but in the beginning it was kind of like, Oh gosh, I have to go do this.
But once I started playing games, started to get to know them, they actually wanted to come to my class. They actually started seeing my classroom as a safe space because they knew it was somewhere that they could fail, but that was okay.
It was still gonna be fun. It was still gonna be the whole message is we're learning. We're growing.
You don't have to worry necessarily about getting a grade or anything in here. You're just here to work on yourself and your reading, and I'm here with you, and we're gonna make this fun and safe space for you. And that was a big, big thing for me.
Absolutely. And I think you're hitting on just really the social construct of that and that games really are are social. And so whether that's in building rapport with you or if you have groups, then you also have kids that are collaborating together. Right?
They're using language. They're building that confidence. They're laughing at the same time that they're learning. And so, again, whether you're one on one, whether you're in groups, it really is that opportunity to build a lot of that in.
And like you said, just that positive association with your class or with reading just in general or spelling, right? We'll take a lot of those games and do reading and spelling. It's huge. It's absolutely huge.
Okay. So now that we know Games work. Let's talk about where we actually fit them in into the instruction.
Yeah. And this is so important because, again, if I come back to where I was in the beginning thinking, oh, we're gonna play Battleship at the end, and that's just what we're gonna do. If you've done everything right, then we'll just do this and just use the last five, ten minutes to do something completely unrelated. No.
What we wanna do is we want to remember that games are not the starting point. So to your point, it's something that you can do as review. So once you've explicitly taught that concept, then we want to provide structured practice second and then games third. So you're always starting with here's the explicit instruction.
I'm explicitly teaching you that e a says e we're going to practice that in a number of different contexts. We'll practice it with some of those word lists, we'll practice it with some of the sentences, we'll practice it, and then we can start to incorporate the games in at that point. Once we've had that opportunity to kind of work through or debug it a little bit, we'll say where we've kind of worked through some of that yuckiness. Right.
And I'll just tell students, you know, yeah, you're right. In that first explicit instruction, that first structured practice opportunity, it does feel a little yuck. And we just have to get through the little bit of yuck to where it's not yuck anymore. Right.
And so that also helps, I think, for them knowing, oh, yeah, this is just a little bit of a yucky spot. But then we're going to go and we're going we're gonna clean it up a little bit, and we'll sit through the messy middle of this lesson so that we can get into the game where we can then use that for review and reinforcement. And this is important too because, for example, you said, you know, EA was really hard, so you may continue to pull ea or vowel team games in more even as you move into other syllable types and more advanced patterns. I have one student I'm thinking of in particular who just continues to struggle with vowel consonant e.
For whatever reason, that just is not landing. And so even though we've moved far beyond vowel consonant e in our scope and sequence, we continue to come back to that over and over and over in so many of the games that we do. That's going be the deck that I'm pulling out or that's going to be the games that I'm pulling out.
Exactly.
And yeah, we always have to keep in mind that explicit teaching has to come first because if they don't have the concept, then they're just going be frustrated in the game and then it kind of defeats the purpose of the game. The game is supposed to be fun, but if they're frustrated and they're not having fun, We're we're almost defeating that purpose. Right? Right.
We don't wanna be in the messy middle during the game. We want to have gotten the messy middle out of the way first and then get into the game. And the other thing that's important here is that this is where you can really start to work in that differentiation.
So one of the things that I absolutely love about games is like I mentioned I've got a student struggling with that silent e or that vowel consonant e we're gonna incorporate that. I've got a student who's struggling with multi syllabic words, we are gonna focus on that. But also if you've got groups, one of the beautiful things that you can do is you can start to have students playing for different purposes.
Right? So you may have a group where you're thinking, all right, I've got my one student who's really struggling without consonant e, but everyone else is actually pretty good with that. That's okay. You can still pull that game out.
But then as they are reading, we can also say, okay, when we read our word, we also have to define it. Or we also have to give a synonym or an antonym or we have to use it in a sentence. And so a lot of times we'll do something like that where we'll read through our words and then we'll pick five and we have to use those in a paragraph or something like that. So you can really start to differentiate based off of what your students need.
So I've got one particular student who's really struggling to use conjunctions appropriately in her writing. And so what we'll do is we'll play word war, for example, with those vowel consonant e words that are also tricky.
And then from there, it's like, okay, great. You just pulled a word. Now you're going to have to pick one of our conjunctions. So I've got a deck of cards that will say and, for, but, all of the different conjunctions just to pick one, and then she has to write a sentence using her word and the conjunction that she just picked.
So you can so easily take something that's like, this game is so easy, And you can make that into so many different things, which is also good because that's where you get that novelty Yeah. Building into. Because I know sometimes people say, oh, kids get bored of the same games over time. Well, no, they don't if you change the rules.
Yes. Or if you change the purpose.
Exactly. Exactly.
And I think you bring up such a great point. It's not about having a hundred different games. It's about having a few anchor games that you can flex for those different skills or levels. And like you said, even within a group setting, right?
You have maybe some kids focusing on one skill or another, and then maybe you say, okay, now you're gonna use it in a sentence or you're gonna define it or you're gonna give me a synonym and antonym. And I love that. I do. And it's so creative and kids love it too.
They honestly love to be challenged. So don't be afraid. I mean, I've even changed the rules of some of my favorite games that are We just play, what, trouble or something like that, and all of sudden, I'm like, okay. There's a new rolling rule or there's, you know, a new whatever rule, and it just makes it a little bit more difficult or just different.
It's fun. It's fun.
Try it.
Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. And sometimes you can even have the kids be involved in that too.
Yeah. So I know I had one student that I think of in particular who, he first started, honestly would not come out from under the desk. I mean, was we can't get anything done. If we can get a single word read in an hour session, we're doing well here.
And so that's where those games came in so helpful because he just liked to have control and felt like when he was coming into our session that he didn't have any control. And so I would say, Okay, first things first, we have a couple of games I want you to pick from which one you ultimately thinking about which games are gonna be appropriate first, but then I'm giving that that choice or that control.
And then I'm also giving him some of that opportunity to, alright. What are the rules today? How are we going to play this today? And that just gave sort of that sense of authority or I'm in control of this situation.
And before long, he always knew we're gonna start with a game because that's what we needed to get out from under the table. Right. And he came into the session knowing, okay. I'm gonna be able to set some of the rules.
I'm gonna be able to sort of be in charge here, and that was fine because it was in this contained place to be able to do that. So I think that that's such a great point. Just change the rules. Do whatever.
Let the kids change the rules too. And like you said, you know, this doesn't need to be one hundred different games. This doesn't need to take over your entire lesson plan. This doesn't need to be Pinterest worthy and perfect.
Honestly, you just start small. Yeah.
Absolutely. Even just swapping out a word list for a game once this week can completely shift the energy in your group, your class, your one on one, whatever.
Again, you don't need to be fancy about it. I used to just sometimes write on the board with my kids.
Nothing fancy, marker and a board. Right? But that's all you need.
That's all you need. Yeah. Absolutely. No. I love that. It doesn't it doesn't need to be fancy at all.
And so to keep this actionable because we love we love things to be actionable, we would say take your next word list that you're planning to use. So if you're doing structured systematic literacy instruction, you likely have word lists that you've got students that are supposed to be reading. And instead of just drilling through it, turn it into a simple dice game. So students can roll a die.
They land on a word, and then they read it. That's it. It's the same practice, but it feels totally different. All of a sudden, they're like, I have the dye.
Like, yay. Like, let me shake it, you know, whatever. And that's great. Yeah. It's perfect.
Even online die, they just love hitting that roll button and see it go, phew.
Yep. And when you see how much more engaged your students are, that's your reminder that games aren't extra. They are effective.
Absolutely. And so here's the big takeaway. Games are not extra. It shouldn't be something that we're just tacking on to the end of a lesson because the kids did great and they've earned it.
It's not fluff. It's just honestly one of the best ways to keep your students engaged and, again, to give them that repetition that they need with the concepts that they are continuing to struggle with. So instead of holding them back I know when I first started in structured literacy, it's like, well, they don't have the mastery, they can't move on. Nope.
We move on. Yep. We move on, but we continue to circle back. And the way that we continue to circle back is by using those games over and over and over.
And, again, it allows that differentiation without doubling your prep. Great. We're writing sentences with it. Great.
We're doing vocabulary with it. Great. Whatever it is that we need to do, we're adding fluency here.
So fantastic.
And if this is clicking for you, we love to invite you to our brand new Spotlight PD, the Literacy Game Plan, Using Games to Teach, Engage, and Differentiate.
Yes. And in that training, we walk you through the full framework and share some of our favorite games that you can incorporate into any lesson that you're doing regardless of what curriculum that you're using. You can just easily pull these in, and it will allow you to design your own literacy game plan so that you can head into the new year with tools that are going to bring joy and excitement back for your students and also for you. Just new energy can be so helpful.
Yeah. You can find all the details in our show notes and we'd love to see you there.
Yeah. So thank you for tuning in, we will be back next time with even more practical strategies. We'll be talking more about games and how you can use one game in multiple different ways, some easy no prep or low prep game ideas so you will not wanna miss it.
Thanks for listening to this episode of a smarter literacy podcast.
Make sure to subscribe for more strategies and insights to make delivering effective literacy instruction easy or at least Easier. And if you found this episode helpful, share it with a friend or leave a rating and review wherever you get your podcast. It really does help others find the show, and we are beyond grateful for your Thanks for listening. Until next time, happy teaching.
