Games Center
The Games Center encourages students to apply their knowledge of letters, sounds, and letter-sound correspondance. The students can even apply these skills to building and reading words as well. The Games Center has many hands-on fun games that allow for learning and language connections to be made. This center has a variety of games that can be incorporated and changed as the students progress through the year.
Possible Materials
This center has many possibilities and allows for student choice. Below is a list of suggested materials that might help get you started:
*Commercial and teacher-made games ( Bingo, Bogggle Jr., Scrabble Jr, Memory, Teach Bright, etc.)
*A-Z letter cards ( capital and lower case letters and 2 sets of each)
*Beanbags with letters on them
*Sight Word flash cards
*Word family games ( dice games, sorts)
The Game Center in Action!
The following pictures will show you three different activities that can be done at this center. This will also show the teacher ways of assessing and leveling the activities. These different activities are a great way to use formative assessment so the teacher is able to see how a student is performing on a specfic skill and know what skill(s) will need instruction next.
Row 1: The student is using a beginning sound sorting game. The student has to sort pictures between three different letter sounds. The teacher is then able to assess the student's skill level in dealing with matching letters and letter sounds to make either new sound sort games or move on to a different skill.
Row 2: The student is playing on a missing sound game. The student needs to segment a word in order to identify the missing sound. This allows the teacher to assess the student's ability to isolate sounds and connect to the correct letter.
Row 3: The student is playing Boggle Jr. This game has the student looking at a picture and sounding out/listening to the sounds in a given word and being able to spell the word. This game allows a teacher to assess the student's ability to hear sounds in CVC words.
Additional Ideas and Resources
There are many additional games and materials that can be used within this center. Below are a few more ideas and a few resources you can turn to.
Ideas:
*Upper/lower case letter games
*Beginning sound games
*Alphabet sequencing
*Word building games
Resources:
* www.kidscount123.com (Word family Cans, Real or Nonsense words)