Tutor Information Literacy Games & Strategies

Mix Up, Fix Up

A popular activity with many emergent readers, this builds individual word awareness and recognition as well as understanding of sentence order.

Using a familiar sentence or refrain from a dictated story or book, print the sentence on a large card. Then prepare the individual cards for each word. At first, start with only three or four word sentences or phrases. When the child is comfortably mastering this you can add more words, up to about six.

First, read the sentence or phrase with the child, and lay out the cards in order. Ask the child to reorder them. The child may use the master card as a prompt, or may prefer to try it alone and then check.

Notice the child's strategies. Does he/she say words aloud as he/she arranges them, or does he/she do it silently in his/her head? Does he/she reread the sequence of the words as he/she builds the sentence, using the cadence and the context? Does he/she build sequentially or at random? What other cues does he/she use?

What you'll need: Two cards or wide strips of paper, scissors, pen/pencil/marker. Print each strip with the same sentence from a familiar book or story. Leave one strip intact and cut the other strip up into individual words. Be sure to write the text clearly in print (not script) letters.