Staple brightly colored paper onto a bulletin board or wall to create a word wall. Use yellow or light orange to get the students' attention.
Staple the alphabet onto the bulletin board with the letters in the correct order, leaving space to add high-frequency words below each letter. Write a few of the 220 high-frequency words from The Dolch Word List, which was first compiled by Edward William Dolch in 1948, onto index cards with black marker. As the year progresses, add more words from the list to the wall.
Read the words aloud to the students as you introduce the word wall of high-frequency words.
Turn out the lights, and play a game of Flashlight. Shine a flashlight on one of the words on the word wall. Ask students to sound out the word, and read it. As you add more words, play Flashlight again.
Draw a 4-inch by 4-inch grid with a black marker on five pieces of construction paper. These will be the playing cards for a game of Wordo, which is played like bingo.
Write different high-frequency words from the Dolch list in the grids of the Wordo playing cards. Arrange the words differently on each card so no two are alike.
Write the high-frequency words you used on the playing cards on separate index cards. These will be like the numbered balls in bingo.
Hand out the gridded playing cards to the students. Shuffle your index cards of high-frequency words.
Call out the words, and ask each student to mark off those words on their playing cards with crayons. The first student to mark off a row or column wins.