card game "Go Fish"/ adapted to teach word recognitionPrepare a deck of cards by making 2 cards for each
vocabulary word you want to teach. I use index cards
and write the words on both ends of the card. Colored
index cards work great for K-1 students because you
can also match the words by color.
To play, deal each student 5 cards. They lay down
any matches that they have and read the words aloud.
Each student asks another for a word. They must
address the student by name and spell the word, saying, "Tommy, do you
have "the"...../t/ /h/ /e/." If Tommy has the card,
he hands it over. If not he replies, "Go Fish". Whenever you "Go Fish", you must take another card.
When a student gets a match, his turn continues until he gets the "Go Fish" response.
Any player who runs out of cards, just sits and watches
until there is only 1 player left with cards.
The winner is the one who got the most pairs collected.
I have played this game with students in K through 3rd
grade and they all love it. I teach Title I and so
I work with small groups. But I have also used the
game when I taught regular classroom. I taught and
practiced playing with each reading group. Then for
a cooperative learning activity, we broke into reading
groups and all played at the same time. We played a
lot during the winter at recess time when we couldn't
go outside. One class even organized a tournament.
