All Info About Reading

 File folder games are a great way to encourage young children to practice their reading skills.  The idea has been around for decades, but like many other activity ideas, it ebbs and flows over time.  In case the concept is new to you, file folder games are activities that are drawn or printed on the inside of folders.  They might be formatted as trail games, matching games, or sorting games.  Some are intended for use by individual children and others work well with small groups.  These activities can be self-correcting if you wish, or you can check each child’s work.  Folder activities are easy to make and convenient to store, and best of all, they are fun.

File folder games are easy to make and inexpensive, too.  Start with a blank folder.  Colored ones are more eye-catching, and you can decorate them with your own art work, stickers, commercial clipart, or illustrations cut from magazines.  The more attractive and interesting you can make your folders, the more students will want to play with them.  You’ll need a few other basic supplies, as well, including markers, adhesive, and possibly scissors, paper clips, Velcro, clothespins, index cards, or yarn.  It’s a good idea to laminate your folders and their pieces, so your hard work will look nice for a long time.

The first decision to make is about content.  What concept or concepts do you want the students to practice?  What skills should this activity reinforce?  For our purposes, I’ll present reading-related ideas, but know that folders work well for nearly any subject area or skill.  It is important to clearly define the activity’s purpose, no matter what focus you choose.  In the following sections, we’ll explore some of the infinite variety of file folder activities.  Use your imagination, and I’m sure you will see other possibilities unfold before your eyes.

TRAIL GAMES

Folders make fabulous game boards.  Set up a start and a finish line and lay out a path with curves, turns and twists between the two.  A shortcut or alternate path can add an element of fun to your game.  Add penalty and bonus spaces if you wish and you’re all set.  Use pawns from commercial games or even old marker lids to mark the players’ spaces.  One or two dice, a spinner, or a coin to flip can be used to control moves. 

Content for your game can take one of at least two forms.  You can put the content right onto the game board’s spaces, such as words to read or questions to answer.  You might also put content onto cards and require a response before taking a turn.  This format affords greater flexibility, because you can easily use different sets of cards to change the game’s learning objectives.

SORTING GAMES

Information that can be grouped lends itself well to sorting folder games.  You can dress these up by adding thematic illustrations and details, but sorting games will need separate sections for each group of items to be sorted into.  Sometimes these can be related to content, like a picture of a pine tree and a deciduous tree to sort the names of tree species, for example.  You might be able to relate the sorting areas to the concepts with illustrations, such as long and short-tailed animals for sorting long and short vowel sounds, or caterpillars with different numbers of segments to match the number of syllables in words.  Use small content cards as sorting material, and store them in a reclosable plastic bag fastened to the folder after you laminate it.

There are many phonics concepts that work well for this type of folder game, including initial or final sounds, R-controlled vowels, and long/short vowel sounds.  You can work on comprehension skills by creating several paraphrases of the same ideas to sort out which ones mean about the same thing or by categorizing items.  Emergent readers could even sort letters into vowel and consonant groups.

READING GAMES

Make a series of reading comprehension folder games by clipping one or two-page stories or articles at the correct reading levels and gluing them inside the folders.  Add some comprehension questions and laminate the folder.  Color code the folders to indicate difficulty level if you wish, or use less obvious colored stickers inside so that just the reader can see the level.

MATCHING GAMES

If you have content that is easily paired up, consider matching games.  This would include content such as matching synonyms, vocabulary words and definitions, or antonyms.  You could also design activities requiring players to match identical words or letter sequences, or pictures with words. 

Make your matching game in any of several formats.  Try putting one set of information on one side of the folder and the matching items on the other side in random order.  Affix yarn or string to starting items, and fasten Velcro spots near the things to match with them.  Children would stretch the string across the folder to connect matching items.  You can also put matching items on small cards and have students either press them onto Velcro spots by their matching item or lay them onto the matching thing.  Another idea is to put the items to be paired around the outside edge of the folder, and use clip clothespins with matching information to affix beside the item.

WIPE OFF GAMES

One of the joys of lamination is that you can write on the surface with the same type of markers that you would use for the overhead projector.  Try making folder activities that utilize this fact.  You can create folders with word search puzzles, crossword puzzles, or other fill-in answers.  You could provide a piece of text containing spelling or other errors and have students proofread it.  Matching games could be arranged so that students draw lines between matched items.  Nearly any format that can be utilized with worksheets or paper and pencil tasks can be translated into this type of folder activity.

As you can see, the possibilities for folder activities are nearly endless.  The supplies are inexpensive and readily available.  Students, particularly younger readers, are often enthralled with the change of pace that folder activities offer, and you can create games that match with any theme that you wish.  Now it’s time to head on out to your local office supply store and pick up a box of folders and get started!

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