Students arrange their desks in a circle around the classroom. The teacher starts a story with one sentence on a piece of paper. The paper is passed around the circle and each student adds one sentence to the story. When everyone has contributed a sentence, the teacher reads the story aloud. The game teaches teamwork, collaboration and understanding of story-telling.
Many classic board games can be turned into fun reading comprehension games. Twister is a classic game that is easily converted into a comprehension game by making a story or sentences a part of the directions for where to move a body part. For example, the teacher might say "the flying Purple People Eater went to Paris" or "Yellow jackets like pretty flowers." Students have to listen closely to correctly follow directions. This modification of Twister teaches students to listen to details of the story and apply what they have heard to what they are doing.
Students may create their own crossword clues and answers using a book or story that they are reading or teachers create a crosswords puzzle for the students to fill in. Crosswords questions should ask about important plot points, character development, time lines and other important nuances from the book. Students must remember character names, places and important plot lines, and crossword puzzles test this area of comprehension.
This game involves dividing the class into three groups with an equal number of students and then distributing sentences written on cardboard. Each student will get one sentence on their piece of cardboard. Students are then told to put their sentences in order to make a logical paragraph. The group that finishes their paragraph first is the winner. The game forces students to comprehend and understand not only their own sentence, but their peers' sentences as well.
Knowing how to spell correctly is a large part of reading comprehension. The Round Robin Spelling Bee is a game that requires the class to be broken up into teams of three students. Using a set of elementary level spelling words, the teacher has all the students stand and spell each word, one at a time. Wrong spelling requires the student to keep standing. The team with the most students standing loses the games, while the team with the most students sitting wins.