Korean Job Discussion Forums

[ayahyaha]

I teach elementary-level classes, and in order to get them to focus and follow along, I use a lot of reading games. However, I'm burned out on most of mine and I'm drawing a blank for some new ones.

Any ideas? Or any tried-and-tested activities that work for you?

Here are some of mine:

1. Popcorn Game (Everyone knows this, right?)

2. Stop Reading Game (One student reads one sentence. If they complete the sentence without any mistakes, they're "in" and get to keep playing. If they make a mistake, another student or the teacher can say "stop," and then he/she is "out." The next student must pick up with the incorrectly-pronounced word.

3. Red Stand Up (Students sit in chairs in a circle, with one less chair than the total number of students. One student reads a sentence, then says "Red (or any other color/characteristic) stand up!" All students wearing red must change to a different seat. The student left standing reads the next sentence.)

[YTMND]

[ayahyaha]

[edwardcatflap]

These sound like reading aloud games rather than games where the students read to themselves. I don't quite get the purpose of them either. Are you trying to develop the students' pronunciation accuracy? In which case you probably want suggestions for pronunciation games.

[fezmond]

I don't do the stop game personally but it's a requirement for all my K-teachers.

Elementary kids have absolutely no problem with this game and they even request it during the native lessons, well the lower/younger students anyway. The grade 6 kids don't seem to give a hoot about anything.

[ayahyaha]

Okay, more context: Most of my students are in over their heads, and asking them to read by themselves has proven to be entirely unsuccessful. So, we read everything together. For the younger kids, they need more incentive to focus. These kinds of games really work for keeping them on-task.

They also function to practice pronunciation, but that's not the main focus. For some of these students, just getting them to read a sentence or two aloud is a feat. After we read as a group, we unpack the text together.

Keeping the rest of them following along during reading time is definitely a huge priority.

Doesn't anyone else read texts aloud together? I'm sort of surprised.

[edwardcatflap]

[ayahyaha]

[nero]

Lulz at these 'helpful' responses.
I'm in the same boat OP.
We have to read the books we are assigned. Over and over and over again.
The book and vocab are my curriculum for this particular class.
I do some of the same things as you.

I will take a page, the students (I have 5) choose a number from one to five. The student who picks number one has to remember the first sentence, number two the second sentence and so on. They have a minute to practice, then we read the page aloud in order.
Is this activity useful in any way? Not really. But needs must.

You could play the sentence ordering game. Teams have a time limit to put sentences from the book in the correct order. (Just print out sentences and cut em up).
I do a lot of vocabulary games.
Speed reading.
Tongue twisters.
Comprehension questions.
Charades (students act out a key sentence/idea from the pages we are reading).

The games can get very old, I agree.

[ayahyaha]

[schwa]

Kids always get a bit of excitement out of running dictation, & it drills a number of skills: http://www.teachenglishinasia.net/eslgames/running-dictation#

Me too, I've never heard of this "popcorn game." OP, what is it?

[ayahyaha]