Reading Games for Third-Graders
- As third-graders get introduced to reading plays, set up a game for them to play in groups. A group play game allows students to practice reading a play and acting out the scene in their group. Each student in the group is assigned one character to play. As the students read their parts out loud, they must perform the actions as if they were giving a real performance in front of an audience.
- Students in third grade are exposed to introductory poems -- some that rhyme and others that don't. Give your students practice reading different styles of poetry and then play a game together. As a class, sit in a circle on the floor. The teacher begins by coming up with a stanza to start off the poem. Then the student to the teacher's right continues with the same rhyme scheme that the teacher sets. For instance, if the teacher comes up with an A-B-A-B rhyme scheme, the students must all mimic it. The object of the game is for students to take what they learned from reading poems and apply it to orally developing poems on their own.
- Reading comprehension skills can be enhanced when students have a profound understanding of vocabulary words. Play a vocabulary reading game with your students so that they become familiar with learning new words that they will find in their third-grade reading material. Provide students with a list of vocabulary words that are selected from their mandatory reading assignment. On the teacher's mark, students race against one another to be the first person to find all of the words in their reading material. Students circle the words when they find them on the pages, and the first student to find all of the words wins.
- A reading game that tests student comprehension requires students to write a news report on the book they read. This game asks students to read a book, or other material, and pretend they are news reporters who have to summarize the main events that took place. The second half of the game is that students must present their news reports to the rest of the class and perform the reports in a way that a reporter would do on television. For a prop, give the students a microphone to speak into.
