Fun Second Grade Reading Games for Kids

Fun Second Grade Reading Games for Kids
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Spelling Words

As your second graders progress on to harder spelling lists, it becomes increasingly challenging for them to read spelling words. Make reading new words fun by infusing it with a twist of action in these 2nd grade reading games for kids.

1. Gather everyone on one side of the alphabet rug in your classroom.

2. Tell the class that you will be flashing words that they have to be able to read and spell out. How? Once a word is flashed, the first student volunteer reads the word aloud once. Quickly, drop the flashcard and instruct the student to hop on the letters of the alphabet rug to spell it out. Once s/he is done spelling, the student says the word aloud once again and “gets off” the rug to the other side of the the alphabet rug.

3. Do this repeatedly for all students until everyone has crossed to the other side.

Storyteller of the Day

Showcase the fluency skills of your students by featuring a storyteller for the day three times a week. But instead of the story being read live in class, the chosen student, with the aid of the teacher, records his/her reading of his/her favorite story book using any digital recording device (the teacher may use his/her laptop). After recording, prepare a short powerpoint presentation to go along with the storyteller’s voice. The powerpoint should also contain the sentences from the story. During the storytelling day, bring everyone to the audiovisual room to watch the storytelling session, with your featured storyteller sitting in front and dressed in a costume related to the story being presented.

This is a very effective to boost students’ motivation to read aloud more frequently to improve their fluency. The fact that the entire class is listening to the presentation that the student himself/herself recorded (1) affirms and in turn, pushes the student to want to read more and (2) caters to the comprehension capabilities of the rest of the class which favors listening while reading as more effective in comprehension than reading alone. The storytelling rotation provides everyone with an equal opportunity to be a listener and a reader.

By the end of the first round of storytelling, the teacher selects a storyteller of the month to be featured on the class bulletin board as the Champion Storyteller of the Month.

Walkie-Talkie Relay

You will need two sets of improvised Walkie-Talkie’s–plastic cups connected to each other by yarn. The game rules are:

1. The teacher sits in the middle of the room with one set of Walkie-Talkie’s on each side. Several steps away from her left and right are two lines of students–one line to the left and one line to the right, with one line acting as one team in this relay.

2. The students were previously given strips of paper with sentences on them. The job of the students is to grab the other end of the Walkie-Talkie, read the sentence fluently in the cup, and if the teacher approves, runs back to the end of the line to give the turn to the next student.

3. The teacher will be holding one cup on each of his/her ears and only approves those students who read his/her given sentence fluently.

4. The first team to complete the round wins.

Every reading teacher knows that it is of vital importance that the love of reading be established among early graders. This not only helps them become better spellers, writers, and academic performers in school in their later years but also instills in them a life-long love of learning new things through reading. Design and create 2nd grade reading games for kids with one goal in mind–to motivate them to love reading.