All that is needed for this activity is word cards and ones cubes. I make the cards myself by cutting small cards out of construction paper and writing FRY words on them. each FRY word is found twice in the deck, each in a different color. The objective of this activity is to say the words and match them, just like Old Maid. I have been playing this game all year long and not ONCE have I won... I guess your memory does go with age. However, to meet my students' needs I made some modifications to this very simplistic game:
1. Each game has a theme, Ex. Baseball, spring, plants, christmas, etc. whatever the students choose.
2. Once a match is made, the student has to say that word in a sentence that matches the games theme.
3. For each word that is said correct, the student gets 1 cube, whether it is a match or not.
4. If it is a match and the student uses the word in a sentence, they get 3 cubes total.
5. If a student is unable to pronounce a word, they may ask for help and the student to first pronounce the word gets a cube.
6. If a student cheats by switching around cards that are in play, that player must give every other player 1 cube.
I made these modifications to the activity so that each student stays engaged and it focuses more on the word work rather than the matches. In the beginning I saw that many students only paid attention when it was their turn. Which is why now students can win by pronouncing other student's cards. I also wanted the focus to be on pronouncing the word instead of who gets the most matches. I also believe that putting the word in a sentence adds higher order thinking to the activity.
Please feel free to try! The students love this activity and are always excited for when it comes to RTI time, which is the way learning should be!