Florida Center on Reading Research

I just found this organization, the Florida Center for Reading Research, and it has a plethora of reading activities for grades K-5. The center has all kinds of lesson ideas ready to go.

The educator page takes you to student center activity resources. Each activity has a page of instructions. Most are then followed with some resources to use. For example, the grade 4/5 vocabulary word knowledge section begins with synonym bingo. There are sample cards. They provide a set of sample cards which can be copied, cut up and assembled into new cards, blanks for gluing words on to, and cards to draw. A sample is below:

synonym bingo
every	ill	shout	close
agree	heal	late	finish
locate	mend	fragile	often
go	own	help	build

 

synonym bingo
below	gift	thin	error
brave	allow	stop	want
try	begin	pair	right
put	hide	huge	near

 

The words cards are as follows:

all, sick, yell, shut, consent, cure, complete, tardy, find, fix, breakable, frequent, leave, possess, assist, construct, start, couple, place, correct, conceal, courageous, mistake, permit, end, close-by, desire, immense, slender, present, attempt, under

The fluency module for phrase progression has the following exercise.
In a small group take turns reading a card which might look like the following. Be sure to use good prosody:

• My aunt
• My aunt, who is a police officer
• My aunt, who is a police officer, goes to schools
• My aunt, who is a police officer, goes to schools to talk
• My aunt, who is a police officer, goes to schools to talk about safety.

Reading this progression embeds repeated reading into an oral reading of phrases. An alternate activity could be to have one student start with the first line and have another student join in for choral reading as each line is read. Weaker students could be placed near the end of the reading to hear it before being asked to read. The choral nature also reduces embarrassment is a student cannot read a particular word. Students could search out sentences from their readings and list for such a reading practice, or they could practice writing. It provides experience with complex sentences, a topic of interest for many students at this grade level.

If you are looking for some innovative ways to incorporate reading activities into centers or to work with small groups, the Florida center is a great resource.