Interactive Activity for Remedial Reading: Four Ideas

Interactive Activity for Remedial Reading: Four Ideas
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Interactive Learning Wall

When students engage multiple senses they are better able to grasp language skills. Whether using interactive wall lessons or online activities, students will enjoy participating in these activities.

The Calendar Wall

There are several ways to use an interactive learning wall with students in remedial reading. The Calendar Wall is most familiar in

remedial reading rooms. On this wall, students must identify and post the correct day, month, year and weather, along with other information such as holidays and birthdays. However, interactive learning walls can easily turn into game boards.

This game can be modified for the various levels of the students in the remedial class.

Materials needed:

  • Word Cards – color code words by parts of speech (i.e., nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.).
  • Picture Cards – make sure the pictures are clear and well defined.
  • Sentence Cards – create beginnings of sentences to be built on by the students (i.e., I like to…or, The dog went…).
  • Note books or paper to track word.

Make one title banner that reads, “The Matching Game” and another that reads, “The Building Game.”

The Matching Game

For low-level learners, tack up pictures that students can then match the words to after they have read them with the teacher.

For remedial readers who are more advanced, display the words. Ask the students to match the pictures, or have duplicate words for them to match.

Once they match the words/pictures correctly, the students write that word onto their paper or into their notebook. Later, they can read their list back to the teacher.

Note that the students have listened to, viewed, written (this act is akin to feeling) and spoken the words they are learning.

The Building Game

As students advance in remedial reading, they will enjoy the building game where they will learn to build compound words, as well as sentences.

Under the Building Game banner, place the beginnings of compound words. Have the students read the words on the board. Hand them one new word card, then ask them to “build” a new word by placing it behind one of the words on the wall.

Once done, they will then write the word in their notebook.

For sentences, post one sentence on the board. Have students use the words they know to finish the sentence. Allow them to be silly, as long as the sentence is grammatically correct. For instance, “I like to ride stars to the moon,” would be correct, but, “I like mashed beans down street home,” would not be correct.

Online Learning

For older students, Deltora from Scholastic encourages reading while providing students with opportunities to reinforce learning through online games and quizzes. The publisher suggests this site for students ages 9-12.

Students of any age will enjoy finding the meaning to words with the Simple Photographic Dictionary. Tailored to children, this dictionary provides word searches alphabetically, as well as for rhyme and by the ending consonant.

Word Bubbles helps scaffold learning by challenging students to build words from the first three letters given. Students accrue points for each correct word they spell. This is an excellent game for older remedial readers.

Other Resources

Word games such as Rory’s Story Cubes are another way to encourage interactive learning. Each of the story cubes has simple pictures printed on all sides. There are endless ways to use these cubes in the classroom to encourage language development. For remedial reading classes, students first identify the picture, and then write the name of the picture. Later, after they have mastered the pictures, they could use the cubes to tell stories.

Resources