Games can help build needed phonics repetition. It is best to use them at the end of regular teaching to stretch learning time. A good game can teach a lot more than you expect. With 40L’s Greek and Latin word root bingo game, students learned more word roots than they had with the previous worksheet based curriculum!
40L’s phonics concentration game is a fun game that makes both real and nonsense words. It can be played quickly, reinforces phonics lessons, and incorporates nonsense words to help stop the guessing habit. It is correlated to both 40L’s phonics lessons and Don Potter’s Blend Phonics Units, but can be used with any phonics program.
Logic of English has a game book with a lot of different phonics and phonemic awareness games.
University of Florida’s Literacy Institute, UFLI, has several different free games. See their game generator and the UFLI toolbox lessons for a printable paper Roll and Read game; click onto the lessons to see the Roll and Read game associated with each lesson.
Don Potter has decoding cards that are designed for use with Blend Phonics but can be used with any phonics program. You use them for sounding out words with various games; they are decoding cards, not whole word flash cards. You can play relay races with the cards, hide them then find them and sound them out, etc.
40L’s Greek and Latin word root bingo. Read words and definitions associated with each root while students play bingo with the roots. It is best to teach the phonics of Greek and Latin words before the game, see the morphology page for more information about how to teach the phonics of morphology. The last 4 lessons of 40L’s syllables lessons also cover the phonics and morphology of Greek and Latin words.
The following games are not as good for reinforcing phonics as the other games, but are fun, and you can learn a bit while playing.
Modified Scrabble: You can modify Scrabble to focus on spelling and reading words. Have players place their words anywhere on the board, they do not need to be connected. You can either use any word types your student can spell or focus on a specific type of word such as short vowel words or long vowel words. Their card game “Scrabble Slam!” can be similarly modified.
Letter Race: This is a simple game 40L uses at the end of group classes. You can continue to play as students leave, the groups just get smaller as students leave. You put plastic letters or Bananagram letters in two containers. Have each group form a line across the room from the container of letters. Scoop them up in one hand, run back to a table on the opposite side of the room, then each team builds words. You can give 1 point for each word or 1 point for each syllable when students can build longer words. The team with the most points wins. Play for 2 - 5 minutes each game, count down the last 10 or 20 seconds before the end.
Our YouTube page has a video showing how to play the 40L phonics concentration game and the Letter Race game.
Games make learning phonics enjoyable and interactive, helping students learn while having fun. They help extend the time children are able to pay attention. 40L volunteers have found that games are most useful at the end of the lesson, when attention starts to wander. So, add in a game or two to your lesson time. They are fun to watch as well as to play!
