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 Lindsey. And I'm Corey. And today, we're going to get super practical, and we're gonna talk about how to gamify your reading lessons without adding more prep to your already very full plate.
If you've ever thought, I love the idea of games, but I don't have time to prep them, this episode is for you.
Yes. Because we are going to share some of our favorite no prep games plus a framework for how one activity can be stretched to cover multiple literacy skills. And I promise the little time that this will take will be so worth it.
Absolutely.
So let's start with a few of our go to no prep games. These are the ones you can do with just a whiteboard, a dice, or a word list.
Yeah. Absolutely. So first up, and I know we mentioned this in our last podcast because this is so easy. This is such an easy one to start with, but we call it the dice game.
So you can literally take any word list that you have. And again, if you are following a structured systematic phonics based progression, you usually have a word list. There's usually words that you're asking students to be able to read. And so that might be CVC words, that might be sight words, multisyllabic words, and you just honestly have students roll a die.
They move the number of words that they rolled, and then they read whichever word they landed on. Or if you wanna take this even to the next level, have them read each of the words before the one that they landed on. Yep. And you can then just mark it with just a little counter chip or they can just mark it with their pencil.
You can literally just mark it in any way and then whoever gets to a specific word first wins. So you could potentially have them roll through a couple of times where they can practice the words a few times. And maybe the goal is that they land on like the fourteenth word, but they have to roll it exactly. So if they pass it, they have go through and do it again.
Right.
And it's just honestly something that as long as you have a die, you can just use that.
You don't need anything else. Exactly. And let's say you want to kind of differentiate even more and all of a sudden you want to practice word reading in sentences, right? So let's say you have a list of five to six sentences with those words in them that you've been practicing, and they roll a die one through six, and all of a sudden they have to read that sentence, whatever number that was.
Yeah.
And so now they're reading that word within a sentence along with maybe some other words.
You put two words in each sentence.
That can always be a fun one just to see, okay, we've read in isolation, now we're gonna move to sentence reading. And one thing that I do with one of my students is there's five sentences sometimes, but if he rolls a six, I get to read the sentence. So I read the sentence. So of course he's trying to roll the six the whole time.
The the probability of that happening is lower, and usually he's the one reading, but anytime he does land on a six and he's like, oh, now you have to read it, it's always a lot of fun for him.
I love that, and that's such a great point. So you can do this with a word list, you can do this with sentences. Another way that you can take the dice game is you can even take comprehension questions. And what you could do is you could have, okay, we're gonna ask a direct recall question.
We're gonna ask a sequencing question. We're going to ask a main idea question. And you could have questions sort of ready for any of the six that they roll. They roll a one, they roll a two, they roll a three, they have to answer that particular question.
And sometimes they'll have to roll a few times. And then to your point, yeah, if you roll a six or if you roll a certain number, then you're done. Or then I have to do that one. And so you can get as many reps in as you really want.
Yeah. But it's just honestly, you pull that dye out and everything changes. And you can even mix that up a little bit too of if you have a big fuzzy dye or if you have, you know, a popper dye, like you can potentially take that and even mix that up a little bit to keep it new and fresh even though it's the same thing over and over and over again. Exactly.
So love that. So the dice game, you can adapt it in so many ways. I know we have different things that we even do with fluency where we'll give different emotions that you have to read it depending on the die that you roll. And so if nothing else, go get a set of dice for your literacy intervention and just figure out how can we use this.
You can even ask your students. We're gonna try and create a game. What might the game look like? And honestly, some of my best games have come from them.
Yes. So Exactly. That's that's easy.
Another one that we love and they're super super simple, tic tac toe. You can just draw the grid on your whiteboard or on, you know, the table wherever the sheet that you're working on. And students can fill that grid in with letters, with sight words, with spelling words.
And then all of a sudden you have a game board that you can use to then have them read back or define words or use those words in a sentence. And so I absolutely love doing this because oftentimes I'll say, okay, we're gonna play a game, but we need to set it up.
So let's go ahead and make our tic tac toe board. And then, you know, I want you to choose in that grid where should we put the ah? Where should we put a letter makes that sound? Where should we put a?
And so I'm doing the auditory drill, right, where I'm asking them to write the letter that matches the sound that I just provided, but they just think, oh, I'm just setting up the game board so that then we can play in the next piece of this. And so it's really great way to to sort of, I don't know, make something that normally would be really boring. I'm gonna give you ten spelling words. Okay.
We're gonna do nine, but we're gonna put them onto the game board so that we can get ready to play.
Absolutely. And I've done that so many times with my older students, my middle schoolers. Again, instead of writing it on a piece of paper, I'm saying the spelling word, they're spelling it and they're putting to the tic tac toe board and then we play tic tac toe. The other thing I do with some of older students is before they can actually put their X or O or whatever their marker is on that word, have to read it and they have to use it in a sentence.
Depending on what I'm asking them to practice, sometimes they can just say the sentence verbally. Sometimes I have them write out that sentence. And then we, you know, even go through the, okay, let's make sure capitals and punctuation and all of that just because that's what they're working on. And then once they've done that, then they can put them X down and I, but I have to do that too.
So like if I'm their opponent, right, I'm doing the same thing and I'm using it a sentence. So we're getting vocabulary practice maybe with using that in a sentence.
We're getting writing practice in. And that way it's making them work a little bit more. But it also kind of slows the game down a little bit just because tic tac toe can be pretty quick, especially with your older students.
And it makes, again, feel more challenging for them, and so they feel like, whoo, I won. Absolutely.
And then, like you said, you're getting a lot of modeling in there.
The other reason that this can be so helpful is if you have students that are playing games with other students. So sometimes we will use games as an opportunity for students to play together while we're working with another student on progress monitoring or something like that. And so oftentimes, if you've got students that are playing the game together while you're not necessarily there, that's also giving you an opportunity to see their sentence that they wrote or they have to write down the words that they landed on. And so that's just really helpful because then you can also check to make sure, did you actually play this?
Because sometimes it's like you just rolled and ran through the whole thing and you weren't actually doing it. But that can help to provide sort of that proof, if you will. But yes, I did it, or I did the spelling words and then I wrote down the ones that I landed on, so it's giving them extra practice of just even that copy work can still be super helpful. Then they can put them in alphabetical order or they can define them, all kinds of different things.
Lots and lots of skills. And I will say, you know, when I did have my group of three and I would be progress monitoring with one student, I'd send the other two off to do either some kind of independent work or group work, and I loved using the games with them. I found that, especially with my older students, they helped kind of monitor each other. If one of the students spelled something wrong or didn't use it correctly, their partner would be like, you didn't do that right. You got to rewrite it or you got to redo it or whatever and everything because obviously it's a competition. The other one wants to win. So they're like holding their partner accountable.
And all of a sudden it becomes, oh, look, they're practicing this and they're applying it in real life without me being there. And they have a peer who is even looking to be like, hey, you need to fix that. And it really does. It works. It's great. Absolutely. I love that having them hold each other accountable is great.
And that comes back to even just that that social piece and that combined learning that we talked about in the last podcast, which I think, again, if you missed it, definitely go back and check that one out because we talk all about why games are so important. And that's such a huge piece there.
So we have the dice game first. So all you need is a die or a few dice that you can use in your class or in your group. We also have tic tac toe. Literally, all you need is a whiteboard marker.
You can have a fancy grid if you want. We have a template for you that you can absolutely use, but you don't even need it. You can literally just write it out, which is super simple and great. And sometimes I'll have students do that on the whiteboard up so that they're standing to get a little bit of break from sitting.
So again, really no prep on either of those.
Another no prep game that we love is the vocabulary guessing game. So this would be another one where if you had a word list or something like that, you could pick a word from the list and you could define it. So we like to use the vocabulary framework where we would define that using the category, so the group that it fits into. So oftentimes, that might be a part of speech, it might be, oh, it's an animal, or it's whatever the group or the category is.
The function, what does it do? A synonym, what is it kind of like? And then an antonym or shade of meaning. So how is it different or what is the opposite?
And then they guess. Right? So it would be kind of set up like this.
I'm thinking of a word.
It's an action word that we use when we get from one place to another in a car. It's kind of like go, but it's the opposite of park. What's the word I'm thinking of?
Drive. You did it. Yes, you did it.
Right? And so, again, thinking if you were using those vowel consonant e words or whatever it is, they're having to scan through all of the words, meaning they're having to read it silently to be able to identify what is the word. Or if you've got students who struggle a little more with that, maybe you've read all the words first. Yeah. And then you can start to do that and you can take turns of kind of going back and forth. So that can be really fun.
And sometimes it's even a little bit like heads up or something like that, you're just using your word list.
Yes, And I can see this even being, you know, if you're getting to the point with your kids where you're starting to work on those suffixes, the prefixes, right? How they're changing the meaning of words and you're really working in that morphology, this would be a great game to play with them where they kind of have to play around with the language.
Absolutely, and that's such a great point if it's a describing word or you can see how they're starting to use that.
And sometimes that's where you can then make some corrections too because sometimes they'll describe something a little bit off. You're like, I'm having a hard time thinking through this. Let me work through each of those and x out the ones that it couldn't be based off of the first clue that you gave so that you're also showing sort of your process of thinking and process of elimination through that which can be so helpful too. So that one's a really good one and it's a really good one especially if you have mixed groups where maybe some of them have more of a phonics need and so they're needing to focus more on the word recognition side.
But then you have other students who maybe need to work more on the vocabulary or if you have English language learners or kind of multilingual students, then that can be a really helpful way to tie both of those things in for them.
Exactly.
And then you can even take that same game and flip it and let them give you clues. So the rule is you can't use the word you're describing. Like you said, again, it's basically heads up, but you're pulling from the target pattern you're working on. So again, having them do the work too is really fun.
Absolutely. And they'll get excited like, it's my turn. It's my turn. Want to pick the word.
I want to pick the word. And so that can be fun too. You're just bringing back that joy or that excitement to let me scan through the words and let me find one that I want to describe and that executive functioning comes back in again of let me think of some that I could describe effectively so that other people also understand which is all about communication. Yeah.
Right? And so sometimes it's like, oh, I thought I had the perfect definition, but nobody else was following or tracking with what I was saying. And so that can be an interesting piece as well to watch for your students.
All right, so that's three different ideas. So we've got the dice game. We have got the tic tac toe. We've got just a vocabulary guessing game, all things that you need basically nothing for.
And then the last no prep favorite that we have is story building with spelling words. So basically here what you can do is that each student uses one of the words from their spelling list in a sentence and together you're creating a silly story that incorporates as many of those words as you can. And so it's almost we would say kind of like round robin where one student will pick a word and from the spelling list and they'll use it in a sentence and then they pass it to the next student. And the next student will read the last sentence and then choose another word and build.
And it's so funny because the kids will get so worked up about this where they're like, no, that's not where the story is going. That's not where it's going. It's like, you, it's not your turn. And so the story is taking, you know, an interesting turn.
But it's a really great opportunity for students to be able to kind of work collaboratively as well. And it's just, it's so fun to see where that goes. And it's a great opportunity to see capitals, appearance, meaning, punctuation. Like let's kind of check each of those pieces as we go together.
This almost reminds me of a game that I think actors do in like acting school where it's someone starts a scene and someone has to kind of continue the scene, right? So, and it gets those creative juices flowing while still staying focused on what we are intending them to do. Focus on these words and these patterns that we're practicing and just to see where it goes and what the kids will do. It's so much fun.
It is so much fun. And one of the things that you can even do there is depending on how many students that you have in that group, you could even use some of your writing structure to be like, look, together, we need to have a cohesive paragraph. So this can't necessarily in the beginning it can be totally silly and crazy. That's fine.
That's totally fun. However, you can start to scaffold that by making that more challenging to say, if we've got five students here in this group, we need to have a full cohesive paragraph. And if it's going be a narrative, that means the first person's got to set up our characters and setting. The next has got to rise to our problem.
The next has got to set our problem. And then fourth is going to get us transitioning into the solution. And the fifth person's gonna do the solution. So that way they're also thinking about, okay, we need to structure this in a way that actually structures what we would expect of a narrative paragraph, for Exactly.
I love that. So fun. So fun. So that's just four ideas, completely really no prep at all.
All you really need is a die, and you're good to go. All the other things that you can just do with literally no materials at all other than your existing lesson material. So those can be seriously no prep. You can incorporate those right away.
Alright. So here's the thing, though. Games can start to get really fun because to the point that we just made, you do not need a new activity for every single skill. You can have one word list, one game, and you can target every piece of the literacy processing triangle, every piece of the five core components of literacy.
So we're thinking phonological awareness, phonics, vocab, fluency, comp.
Yeah, awesome, and let's actually just walk through that. Let's say you were playing a game like Word War where students are flipping each card and reading the word.
Could have them focus on the orthography, highlighting or identifying the phonics patterns that you're reviewing, Practice phonological awareness where they use the word to create a rhyme, phoneme substitution, phoneme deletion.
You could also have them develop vocabulary, provide those synonyms, antonyms, or multiple meanings.
Build executive functioning skills like we've been mentioning, identifying words that are unfamiliar to them, practicing writing using those words in sentences, paragraphs, and like we just mentioned, that group story.
Yeah, absolutely. So when we think about how we do this with our students, we have a set of games that we like to use and we like to have them so that we've got basically word lists or cards that have different words that are targeting the different syllable types or the different patterns.
But we don't need hundreds. I mean, we have just a few to be able to hit each of the different syllable types and just so that we can mix things up a little bit. But when you're first starting, honestly, you can have one, two games and be able to take those really far. I even have a game that I really like.
It's called Crazy Short Vowels. And it's a CDC game where it's almost like you're matching. So you have seven cards and it's kind of like Uno a little bit. But you're trying to get rid of all of your cards by matching the vowel sound, the initial sound, the final sound.
But to your point, we can really start to focus on that orthography. So I might say, okay, we're going to focus on finding the vowel. So once you have your card that you're going to flip, you also need to write down the vowel like on the whiteboard. So you're going to write down the vowel sound that you had.
And then we'll say, okay, great. What would be a word that rhymes? What would be if we changed the vowel sound? What would be if we got rid of the first sound?
And we can start to play with it that way.
But I can use that forever even beyond the point where they're kind of past the CBC to your point of vocabulary.
A lot of times these words are words like hub, right, where it's sort of like or cap. And it's like, okay, that was easy enough to read, but how do we describe hub? Like what is a hub? What is the group that that fits into?
What is its purpose? What is it kind of like? Same thing, cap, like you said, the multiple meaning words. What will happen is if you're playing with a group you have students and you say, okay, I want you to define that, then somebody's going to tell you, oh, it's kind of like a hat.
It's something that you wear on your head.
And then I'll ask, was anybody else thinking of something different? And somebody will be like, I thought of the cap on my water. And so then you can start to go through. And then some kids will be like, I thought like cap, like you're lying.
Oh, that's where you're gonna learn all the slang, right? Yep. And so anyway, I think in that way you can absolutely do that. And then also just with building that executive functioning skills, what you'll start to see sometimes is even things like tic tac toe or trying to get five in a row, like where students place their chip or their word where they picked something.
Yeah. Sometimes you're like, why did you choose to go there? Yeah. Like, oh, actually, now I'm gonna do this.
And what you're doing when you say, oh, it's interesting that you did that.
I'm gonna do this next. Or what do you think I'm gonna do next? You're building inferences and prediction ability right there so that they can build that foundation of, oh, you need to infer what I'm gonna do next. If you put your piece there, what do you think I'm going to do?
Exactly. That's a foundational literacy skill that that you can build right there. And then, yeah, like you said, then writing. You can turn anything into writing.
So if you've got groups where you've got students who are more advanced, we have people asking us all the time, how do I support students who are advanced?
Anytime you can turn anything into writing, you're making it more advanced. So do that. If you've got students where you're like, oh, I have to keep doing this CVC game even though some of my students can read these words really easily, they probably can't define all the words really easily, and they probably aren't necessarily writing perfectly beautiful sentences with those words.
Or even like we said, those CVC words, Okay. Cap, now give me a synonym for it. And then maybe they're saying something like, Oh, a hat or a bottle, right? So then you're getting to think about multiple meanings or even like, okay, how would I define this word and what is a similar or what is the opposite of this word?
Yep. And a lot of times that's where I then end up, you know, taking out the iPad or computer or whatever to be able to say like, all right, let's take a look at a picture. And let's try and define it that way because sometimes you might be like, oh, I don't really know how to define this. Well, let's look at a picture and let's see if we look at the picture if we can then start to define it from there.
And so that's just a really great way that you're supporting everybody and yeah, you're just building that richness in vocabulary or whatever it is that you're working on. And the beautiful thing is, is that you don't have to do all five things. You don't have to think about, okay, how am I incorporating phonological awareness and phonics and vocabulary and fluency and comp. You don't have to do that.
You can really start to think about who, like which students need what, and you can just switch it up each time. So each time that you play it, you can always play it with a different intention or a different purpose.
And that's how you can keep it engaging too.
That's where you can bring that novelty back where it's like, oh, this time we're gonna play it.
The rule's slightly different. So then they're not like, we're doing this game again. Although I have to say, I don't get that a lot. I get kids that are honestly like, can we play this game again?
I'm like, again? Gonna play that again. But I I think about my own kids and even as I was a kid and I'd watch the same movie, like, eight hundred times. Yep.
That's basically what you're getting. They want to play the same game a hundred times.
So it's it's true.
They always choose the same game to the point where I'm like, actually, we're gonna do this today just because I need to change it. Yes.
And like we said before, you can have the kids change the rules too, and that just builds some of that inventiveness and that creativity.
And that's where we can start to use really those different parts of the brain. And for a lot of our students who are struggling readers, a lot of times they really are creative and they have a lot of these really great ideas. And so it gives them the opportunity to build that side that's already strong for them and you're like, wow, that's such a great idea. I never would have thought of that. Yep. And that allows them the opportunity to shine in a space that maybe they don't feel like they're always shining.
Yeah.
So here's your actionable tip. Take one activity you're already planning, like a word list, and ask yourself, how can I make this more like a game?
Maybe it's rolling dice. Maybe it's tic tac toe. Maybe it's a quick vocab guessing challenge.
Absolutely. And just try one adaptation this week so you don't need to reinvent everything.
You can just a little creative yourself and think how if I was gonna make this a game, how might that show up as a game?
And you will be amazed at how much the energy in your group, in your class, in your setting just shifts. Like, hey, we're gonna try something new. This is going to be fun. And you can even tell sometimes I tell my students, like, going try this new way.
And maybe it's gonna be awesome. And maybe it's gonna totally suck. And if it totally sucks, then you can let me know. We won't do it that way anymore.
But I think that also gives them some of that autonomy and just that, you know, ability to kind of, though Corey that was terrible. That was a terrible idea. And then I'm like, That's totally good. I tried it.
It's fine. And that gives really the opportunity like you mentioned last time to have that safe space to fail. I'm showing that I'm willing to fail. I'm gonna throw this idea out there.
We're gonna try it. And if it's no good, then we'll not do it again. But just try one thing. Just see, like, how could I gamify this just a little bit and just see how your students respond to that.
You know, that actually makes me think back to when I first started, and I was a middle school teacher, and I still first started using DSI, and I was even coming to the coaching calls. And I said something about loving the games but feeling like I could only use them as a reward. And I remember you telling me, don't be afraid to gamify everything. And it worked so well.
It really, really did. So again, just try it. That's all I can say is just try it because it works. Absolutely.
So the big takeaway, games don't have to mean more prep. You can start with a no prep options, or you can start with just a few solid games and use those in multiple ways to make a massive impact for your students.
Absolutely. And if you are ready to take this further, we would love to have you in our spotlight PD.
It's called the literacy game plan using games to teach, engage, and differentiate, where we share a few of our favorite games and templates that you can easily incorporate into literally any curriculum, anything that you're doing.
And we walk you through how to adapt one game across skill levels and help you design your own literacy game plan so you're not scrambling every week. You feel like you've got exactly what it is that you need to make an impact for your students while also having fun. Or you can also check out our shop. So we have a number of our favorite games in there that we'd love to just ship directly to you.
So I know sometimes prep can be a lot. And so we just have card decks that we use in our intervention. And we'll just ship them right to you. So if that's something that you're feeling like, I want to incorporate this, but I don't have time to put all that together, absolutely check that out so that you can see what a massive impact this makes.
Highly recommend, and you can find all the details in our show notes. Thank you so much for joining us.
And remember, one small game can make a massive difference. So we'd love for you to try it out and let us know how it goes. You can absolutely find us at Smarter Intervention. We would love to hear how this process goes for you and any takeaways that you have.
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