Pizza Reading Game

Help Young Children Read Simple Words

May 19, 2008 Elizabeth Pace

A great way for kids in kindergarten or grade one to practice decoding and reading simple three letter words

This game is a fun way for emergent and early readers to recognise that the same groups of letters can occur again and again in making up different words. Tackling groups of letters does not have to be a big step for your students even though they will be learning to link vowel sounds with consonants.

At the beginning help the student sound the consonant beginning and the word endings and then let them try to join them together into a word. If this is the first venture into linking letters and word segments then expect the concept to take a while to take hold, especially as there are no picture clues to help. Remember that their vocabulary may not be very large and they may not know all the words they make - make sure to explain the meanings of words they may not know.

Materials:

Scraps of bright paper, card or foil for decorating
White card
scissors
marker
ruler

Creating Your Supplies:

Make the counters by cutting 16 pizza segment shapes out of the white paper. Decorate the slices with toppings made out of coloured paper.
Make 22 small 3cm x 3cm squares out of the white card. On 21 of the squares write a letter of the alphabet, leaving out the vowels. Draw a pizza slice on the remaining card. This is your joker.
Make a 8cm x 3cm card. Write the letters "at".
Have two larger pieces of card (approx 21cm x 30cm) and draw a large pizza pie shape on each of them. Ensure that 8 pizza segments will fit onto each of the pizza pie shapes.

To Play the Game:

This is a game for two players.
Before starting, each player chooses one of the pizza pie pages.
Place the card which reads "at" face up.
The smaller cards are dealt out, face down, between the players.
Players take turns in picking up and placing one of their cards in front of the "at" card to try and make a word.
If a player makes a word she can place a counter (piece of pizza) on her pizza.
The joker card, when turned up, can stand for any letter.
The game ends when 8 pieces of pizza are on one of the pizzas

Extension:

Try this game with word endings other than "at" such as "en" or "ay",
For more advanced or older kids make the words harder such as "ore" or "are" endings
To shorten the game you could make larger pizza slices so that they only need 6 pieces to complete a pizza.

The copyright of the article Pizza Reading Game in Curricula/Lesson Plans is owned by Elizabeth Pace. Permission to republish Pizza Reading Game in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.