Reading Response #4, March 6, Matthew Hallahan

"Literacy Skill Practice Games" using dialogue script

A conversation between Harriet Tubbman and Cal Ripkin Jr. in the back of a taxi.

two people wait on a sidewalk. a cab pulls up.

-(Cal)Please, take it, you were here first.
-(Harriet)Why, thank you, but what part of town are you headed? Maybe we could share?
-Fourth and F.
-Hop in, I work just two blocks from there.
-Thanks. I'm Cal
-Good to meet you Cal, I'm Harriet.
-Cold enough for you?
-Man, I am so tired of this cold weather, but do you know what cold weather often reminds me of?
-What's that?
-Literacy.
-Thats funny. I'm really interested in literacy, but I don't know much about it.
-No kidding? I find that games are the best way to help biginning readers become fluent.
-Really? I would have expected a lot of boring repetition. How can you improve without drill and practice?
-Thats true, but drill and practice can be spiced up a bit by using games.
-Like what?
-Well, I find that a good game is Lottery. It's played much like bingo. Players have 4 by 4 gridded boards with pictures of common objects in each grid. One by one a person pulls a word out of a hat and says it aloud. If that word is represented by a picture on your board, you cover it with a token. You try to get 4 in a row.
-That sounds kind of easy, Harriet. Got anything tougher?
-Well that's a game for beginners. But you can do other games. Like a basic spelling contest for example.
-I see. That game you could really make as easy or tough as you need, depending on the ability of the learner.
-Exactly. And it can get pretty competitive!
-I can imagine. Oh boy!
-Another game that helps with sentence construction is called Words into Stories. Words are put onto cards. There are subjects, verbs and objects. The players must order them into sentences that make sence.
-That sounds tough. I hope the words are ones the students are familiar with!
-Oh, they are, Cal. You're not trying to trick anyone with this game. You can even color code the parts of speech to make things clearer for beginners.
-(cab driver) Excuse me, I couldn't help overhearing. My mother is an immigrant from El Salvador. She never needed to learn English before, but now, late in life, she wants to learn. Do you think this game would help her?
-Oh, sure. Foreign speakers often have different sentence structures in their native languages. So this could be good practice for speaking in English.
-I'm no expert, like Harriet, but I might also use flash cards. Your mother may have a large vocabulary in spanish, but she needs to become familiar with the words' english counterparts.
-You're so right, Cal. Flashcards are a great technique! But here is my favorite game. Its called Letter Rummy.
-I love rummy, but I've never played with letters before. How does that work?
-Well its just like the card game, but you have a deck of cards that have letters on them. So instead of making matches and runs with numbers, you try to make words out of the letters you have in your hand.
-Wow. That really forces a student to explore all the different letter combinations they can make.
-Not only that but they develop and stretch their vocabulary by seeing some unfamiliar words that other students make.
-Wow, Harriet, you sure do know alot about literacy.
-Thanks, Cal.
-Well, this is my stop. Bye. Brrr. With all this talk of literacy, I forgot how cold it was outside!