Reading Game 2nd Enhanced Edition

This award-winning game by Kenneth Hodkinson, author of the Wordly Wise program, opens the world of reading to kids through fast-paced, rewarding game play. Best of all, the game allows children to move at their own pace with the tutor supporting the student through the game stages. If your child likes to be read to, is familiar with lower-and upper-case letters, and shows interest in story time by pretending to read or wants words pointed out while reading, then they are ready for this game. The simple memory gameplay introduces children to 180 sight words that they will learn and retain. The sight words are taken from the Dolch Word List for PK through 1st and the 100 most commonly used English words from the “Reading Teacher’s Book of Lists” by Edward Fry. Introduced in sets of 5, after every 30 words children are able to read one of the engaging story books. Providing an engaging and educational resource for home and school/tutoring situations, The Reading Game meets Common Core Reading Standards for Kindergarten and 1st grades. You will still need to teach phonics, so a short section of the teacher’s guide is devoted to implementing some phonics in accordance with the material found in the game. Free assessment worksheets and class recording sheets are available online at The Reading Game.

So, how easy is it? There are six readers that use 30 words each. There are 60 word cards (two of each word) that correspond to each book. Place ten cards (two each of five words that are listed in the Rules and Teacher's Guide) face down on the table. Two players take turns flipping the cards over until one gets a match. When a match is made, the player says the word several times in a clear voice. Do this until all five words have their match, then shuffle and play again. Play with the first set of five words until the child can read all five of them without difficulty. Repeat this same process with the next list of five words. Children are asked to read test sentences after every other word group in order to keep all the words fresh. After going through all 30 words, the child is then ready to read the story book. Follow this same procedure for the words for each of the six storybooks. Words from previous books are used along with new words in subsequent stories.

The six storybooks found in the game are very simple to read. They are all printed in lower case letters except for the "I" and there is no punctuation. Children will know that it is the end of a sentence simply because the line ends, and breaks between sentences indicate pauses. The Reading Game includes all six storybooks and six decks of corresponding word cards (60 each) along with a Rules and Teacher's Guide. Downloadable worksheets are available at the publisher's website (thereadinggame.com) pre/post sight word assessments, test sentence worksheets, class recording sheets for the assessments and test sentences.

You will still want to do phonics and there is a short section of teacher's guide devoted to implementing phonics in with the material found in the game. Children will encounter sight words in everything they read, and this game will enable them to tackle some of that reading with more confidence. Donna