Board games are played in groups and you can create a reading-related board game on a simple file folder, with tokens and dice. Design the printable template of square boxes that move in from Start to End. Shade in some of the boxes. In the game, if a player lands on a shaded box the player must answer a reading-related question that the teacher asks, such as "Do you read from left to right, or right to left?" or "What word rhymes with 'cat'?" If the player answers the question correctly, the player continues to roll the dice and work towards the finish line. The player who reaches the end of the board game first wins.
Create self-challenges that students can do on their own out of printable folders. For the folder, print out one page of words and another page of corresponding images, but not in the same order. For instance, one side of the folder has the word 'cat' while somewhere on the other printout is the picture of a cat. Students draw a line from the image to match the word. This activity helps to develop students' identification of simple words, which is fundamental for reading. Another take on this is to have kids match rhyming words, such as a picture of a shell with the word 'bell.'
Vocabulary development is a basic foundation of reading, so use printable folders to help students with new vocabulary words. First, give students a lesson about the new vocabulary words so they are familiar with their definitions. Then, print out file folders that contain word puzzles with the new vocabulary words, such as crossword puzzles, word searches and word scrambles. Give kids a chance to hunt for or decipher the words to practice spelling and reading them.
Print out multiple scrambled sentences onto a piece of paper that is pasted to one side of a file folder. On the other side of the file folder, paste a blank piece of paper. The object of this activity is for the student to unscramble the sentence into correct order using the blank piece of paper. For instance, if the scrambled sentence on the first side of the folder reads "zoo I the to went" then the student would unscramble it by writing "I went to the zoo" on the other side. This gives kids practice writing simple and complete sentences.