Reading Comprehension Game

Over the Spring, I decided that my students reading comprehension skills needed to be challenged. They have made great strides in their ability to retell and comprehend a story but I felt that this skill could be taken even further before the close of the school year. So for one of my prize days, I had the students play a reading comprehension board game based upon The Paper Bag Princess. When I happened upon this game while on Pinterest.com, I became very excited. I loved The Paper Bag Princess when I was little and wanted to share the story with my students.  

The Paper Bag Princess, Board, Game Cards, and Dice

Examples of the comprehension questions

The blog where I found this game is First Grade a la Carte: Odds and Ends from a First Grade Classroom. This educator has been kind enough to share all of the games she has created for many other stories in addition to The Paper Bag Princess. Here is the link for other games. It is such a wonderful idea to take easy read aloud stories and create them into a board game that students can play independently. I hope to make my own in the future.  

I played this game with both my Second and First graders on prize days. They all enjoyed it and excelled at the challenge. The questions are not very difficult. This allows the game to not only engage the students but also build confidence in their reading comprehension skills, which I believe is the most important task of a reading tutor. I think half the battle with struggling readers is building up their confidence and making them believe in themselves. 

What's a part of speech?

Understanding the parts of speech was a challenge for my second graders. They really struggled with identifying whether a word was a noun, adjective, or a verb. In order to help them, I developed a game to review this topic.  The game is very simple but, as all educators know, if you hype something up and act enthusiastically, the students become engaged and ready to learn. 

To begin, I reviewed the parts of speech with my students and placed flashcards with noun, verb, and adjective written on them at the top of the table. Next, I laid out flashcards in front of my students. Each flashcard had either a verb, adjective, or noun written on it. Each student was given a turn to roll a dice onto the flashcards. Once the dice landed on a card, the student had to read the word written on the card and identify as a noun, verb, or adjective. 

See! Very simple!  

I prepared a lot of flashcards for this game so that it would last for the entire 30 minutes of our tutoring session.  

The list below includes all the words I used for this game: 

• Verbs - run, scratch, jump, walk, scream, sleep, skip, flip, hop, dance, sing, laugh, draw, 
• Adjectives - cold, young, old, new, hard, one, soft, blue, sweet, green, sour, red, hot 
• Nouns - dogs, cats, children, brother, markers, friend, fingers, pencil, men, teacher, he, she, it, I, you, boxes, key, babies, computer, characters, monkey, buses, woman, we, they us, them 

In addition to this game, I found a great Smart Board game at arcademicskillbuilders.com that helps students review the parts of speech. Check out the game at this link. 

Story Elements & Sequencing

One of the biggest challenges my Second Graders struggled with during our tutoring sessions was reading comprehension. The literacy model that Richmond uses has the students read a small passage everyday and respond to a series of comprehension questions after the reading. 

I quickly discovered that this was a weakness for ALL of my Second Graders. It was very difficult for them to recall who the characters in a story were and the sequence of events. In an effort to assist them, I created story element cards. After reading the passage, I place the story elements cards on the table while asking them reading comprehension questions. I think it helps them to have a visual stimuli when answering. After using the cards consistently for about a week, I could already notice that my student's retelling skills were getting better. 

I found the template for these cards on Pinterest. I have to admit, I am Pinterest fanatic and find most of my inspiration from there. This is the link to the blog where I discovered these wonderful cards. 

Read Across America Day

One of my favorite days by far this year was Read Across America Day. For a reading tutor, it was an educational heaven. I had to practice some self restraint because I found so many activities on Pinterest that I wanted to try out.  

In my Second Grade interventions, I read The Cat and the Hat to the students and afterwards they completed a writing prompt about the story. While reading, I would let the students read some pages but as I only had 30 minutes with them, I read most of the book. The writing prompt asked them "If Thing One and Thing Two came to my house..." I found the writing prompt on http://seusstastic.blogspot.com/. This is a great blog that posted Dr. Seuss activities for free during the week of Read Across America Day. My students seemed to really enjoy this prompt and their responses were excellent.  

One of my Second Grade Tutoring Groups. So proud of their work!

In my First Grade groups, I again read The Cat and the Hat but their activity was different from the Second Grade. My team member, Macee, created Dr. Seuss hats for the students with rhyme ladders on them. The rhyme ladder was for words ending with -at. I asked the students to color the hats and fill out the rhyme ladders while I read the story. This was a really successful activity that the students seemed to genuinely enjoy.  

 

These boys were very proud of their hats. 

The whole group with their completed hats!

As a part of grassroots community service, on the morning of Read Across America Day, my team member Kalitah and I signed in volunteers from Richmond that came to read Dr. Seuss books to each of the classes. This was a great event because the students were exposed to a lot of members from the Richmond community and were able to hear a lot of books read to them. We spent the afternoon delivering birthday cake to the classrooms in honor of Dr. Seuss' birthday.  

Kalitah and I showing off our favorite Dr. Seuss books

Hunting for Phonemes

A large focus within my Second Grade reading groups is recognizing specific phonemes within words. For one of my prize days in December, I decided to challenge the students to a word hunt. At this point in the year, my students had mastered the following phonemes: 

-ch, -wh, -th, -sh, -ea, -ee, -ay, -oo, -a, -e, -i, -o, -u 

I provided my students with a number of Beginning Reader Dr. Suess books and challenged them to fill up the poster below with words that contain the listed phonemes. Some of the books were:

 

One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish 

Go Dog Go

 Daisy-Head Mayzie

 The Cat in the Hat

 Horton Hears a Who  

     

I choose these books because I didn't want the word hunt to be frustrating for them and I wanted them to feel successful at the end of the lesson.  

In the end, they were very successful! I was very proud of their completed project as were my students.  

My students completed Phonemes Poster

Establishing Order

Before I could being my tutoring interventions, I had to establish some sort of behavior management system within my tutoring groups. Everything I have read about teaching states that students do their best when they have structure and routine. I wanted to create a system that wasn't too strict but would provide enough structure for my interventions to be effective. 

My rules are as follows: 

1. Listen 

2. Follow Directions 

3. Sit in Seat 

4. Be respectful 

5. Have Fun!!  

If my students follow these rules during a tutoring session, they earn a sticker on their behavior chart. If each student earns a sticker for five consecutive sessions in a row, the group earns a prize day. Prize days involve either a literacy game or a free reading day.  

This system has worked really well because it gives the students an incentive to behave and it encourages them to work as a team because all of the students must earn them a sticker in order to get a prize day. It also helps because the literacy model that we use in Richmond *cough* boring *cough* so earning a game day every five days spices things up a bit. 

What is VCU AmeriCorps?

GETTING THINGS DONE!

I want to begin this blog by explaining VCU AmeriCorps and my role within the program. VCU AmeriCorps is a state level program which promotes literacy in Richmond City Elementary Schools and grassroots community service within the City of Richmond. The goal of VCU's AmeriCorps program is to have all Richmond City Third Graders on reading level by the time they exit that grade.  

The role of a VCU AmeriCorps member is multifaceted. At school sites, we offer classroom support and reading tutoring for students in grades Kindergarten - Second. At my school site, I support a Second Grade class in the morning during their reading block. In the afternoons, I pull two Second Grade groups and one First Grade group for 30 minute reading interventions. In addition to these tasks, I act as mentor to my students. Sometimes when a student gets angry, I take them on a walk around the school or provide them the space to tell me about their day and their life.  

When not a school site, AmeriCorps members offer support to other parts of the Richmond community through acts like cleaning up trash along a road, providing meals to those experiencing homelessness on MLK Day, hosting events at the local Boys and Girls club, and supporting food and book drives.  

All in all, VCU AmeriCorps members simply get things done!