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We know that practice, practice, practice makes progress. But we also know that repetition, while helpful, can become boring. One way to achieve meaningful repetition of skills is through games. Below are three ways to easily gamify decoding practice.

SWAT THE SOUND

Materials:

List of words with either one spelling pattern that represents more than one sound, or two different patterns. In the above example, OW is used to represent /o/ (snow) and /ow/ (plow).
A fly swatter.

How to Play:

When you have your word list, write each word on an index card. For extra practice, students can write the words.
Shuffle the cards and lay them out.
Using a fly swatter like this one, the student listens carefully as the teacher says a sound, and then finds, says, and “swats” a word that has that sound.

ROCKs, PAPERS, SCISSORS, READ

Materials:

Decodable sentences. (The ones featured here are from my Decoding Practice resource.)
A set of these fun Rocks, Paper, Scissors dice.

How to Play:

Cut out the sentence strips and place them upside down in a pile.
Players roll the dice. Who ever wins the roll picks up a sentence strip and reads it fluently. The reader keeps the sentence strip.
Continue to roll. Winner picks a strip to read and then keep. The player with the most strips wins the round.

Roll & Read

Materials:

Roll & Read phonics sheets. (The ones featured here are from my Decoding Practice resource.)
Dice. Personally, I love these eraser dice because they have a quieter roll!
Highlighters.

How to Play:

Roll the die.
Choose a word in the row that matches the number on the die. Highlight the targeted spelling pattern.