I love word games. They’re great for starters, plenaries and rescuing a lesson that’s fallen flat. You can plan them in or pull one off the top of your head to fill a few minutes or grab wandering attentions. Here are some tried and tested fun word games that I have used with my post 16 students with learning disabilities.
A – Z
This is probably exactly what you would imagine from the name of the game! You have to think of a word beginning with every letter of the alphabet. I tend to do this writing the words up on the board myself as my students call them out. Depending on the group and the words we are writing I get them to help me to work out how to spell the words or remind me what letter comes next. I especially like this game as you can base it on a theme, which is great for revising something you have been learning about or getting students to think more broadly about a topic. If learners need a little support you could produce a word mat which includes words/words and symbols which begin with each letter of the alphabet which they can use to identify a word beginning with the correct letter. The words on the word mat could be in alphabetical order or mixed up to encourage students to look carefully. Here is an example for a food themed game. P.S. We do cheat for some letters – a food beginning with x?!
The Headband Game
This is a handmade, flexible version of the popular mass-produced game. The first time I play the game with a group I get them to each make their own headband with a strip of sugar paper. This gets the students using some problem solving skills e.g. where to fix it, how to fix it. The first time we play I always go first to so I can model the type of questions to ask the group to help to work out what is written on the post-it. We always ask the student who will wear the headband to leave the room so we can think up what to write on a post-it which we then stick on their headband when they return. I have found that animals, food, drink and objects work well. We try not to give clues but sometimes we just can’t help ourselves! We don’t use any timers but that is something you might want to use to help keep the pace of the game up. This is a really fun game which the students always enjoy.
Missing Letters
This is another board-based game which is great for a starter or a plenary to help students to recap or revise key words or seasonal words. Depending on the group and their familiarity with the words I write more or less letters and include more or less gaps e.g. t __ g __ r. The students then have to guess the missing letters. Any incorrectly guessed letters are written up on the board. Once the whole word is revealed we can count the number of incorrect letters and see how many guesses it took. If you also write the number of guesses up in a list you can use that at the end for a couple of maths questions e.g. which was our biggest number of guesses, which was our least number of guesses, were any of our guesses a two-digit number, did we have any guesses more than 10 and so on. To help students who need a little extra support you could provide a chart showing letters of the alphabet as a prompt.
Beginnings and Endings
Another board-based game. This one reminds me of lockdown as I used to play it with my students during our online lessons. The rules are very simple. Each new word has to begin with the last letter of the previous word e.g. ‘cow window watermelon necklace’ and so on. As I am writing the words up I pretend I can’t remember how to spell them, of course, and encourage the students to help me. You can make this game more tricky by giving it a theme – animals, food or drinks work well, but depending on your topic and how often letters are repeated it can get tricky. For students who benefit from a little more support you could give them a word mat as a prompt (see an example in a – z above).
Categories
This is a game for pairs or small groups. I usually have an assistant with each small group as a scribe as there is a time/score element. Each team needs a name and a small whiteboard and pen, and I draw up a score chart on the big whiteboard. I then whisper a different category to each group. Examples of categories might be things that are red, transport, sports, food, drinks, animals, things you find in a kitchen. I then give the groups two minutes to write down as many things as they can belonging to the category they have been given. At the end of that time one of the students counts up how many words on their team’s whiteboard and I give them a point for each word. The teams then take turns to read out their words to the rest of the class and whichever other team guesses which category the words belong to gets a bonus point for their team. When we’re out of time we count up the points and see which team won.
How many words?
As you can see none of my word games are very imaginatively named! This game is great for a warm up or starter. Each student needs a piece of paper and a pen. I write a fairly long topic related (or seasonal) word on the blackboard and the students have to make a list of new words they can make using at least 3 of the letters from that word. You can only use letters the amount of times they actually appear in the original word. So, for example, if I write ‘hospitality’ on the board the students could make hospital, hops, tilt and total, but not spool because there’s only one o. While the students are writing their words I have a wander round seeing what their ideas are and checking on spellings. At the end of the game we count up how many words everyone has got to see who is the winner and write up some of the words on the board – maybe one word from each student. You could also find out who has the longest word, the most words with 3 letters in, or write up all the words beginning with h (or any other letter).
New Words
This can either be played as a whole class led from the board or in small groups/teams. I quite like to do one example as a whole class then split into teams to introduce a bit more excitement and competition. Each team needs a team name and a small whiteboard and pen. As with ‘categories’ above I have an assistant working with each team as a scribe and I keep score on the big whiteboard. I write a word on the big whiteboard. The purpose of the game is to write a new word beginning with each letter of the original word in turn. The new words are written downwards from the original word. See the image for an example. The assistant scribes as the students think of ideas and when they have completed their words they put their hands up. When the first team puts their hands up everybody else has to stop writing too. I then ask each team in turn to read me their words while I quickly write them on the board so we can all agree together they are correct (and students can see other words their teams haven’t thought of). Each team is allocated one point for each correct word. Once we have finished playing we add up the points to see which team won. This game can be played allowing the students to think of any word beginning with the desired letter or by setting a theme (as in our example which is all animals). Themes can prove quite tricky and I find it works best sticking to things my students know really well like food, drink and animals.
Guess the Picture
This game always causes laughter, because my drawing is so bad! I usually use this game more as a fun activity, though it is also very useful for practising CVC words. I tend to use it as a round in a longer quiz type activity. It’s a good team game, especially if you have picked the teams so there is a sharing out of skills amongst the teams. The game begins with me starting to draw a picture on the board. I draw a line at a time, slowly building the image up until someone identifies it (amazingly they always do!). The team that person represents get a point and a chance for their team to spell the word. If they spell it correctly they earn another point. If they are not sure then another team can try for a chance to earn a point. As you can see from the example my drawings are pretty basic – but they do the trick. This works well as a fun activity in the run up to Christmas as there’s lots of Christmas related items that can be drawn quite simply.
Letter of the Week
A quick google of ‘letter of the week’ brings up so many primary-age search results – but what we do is something different. Our letter of the week activity asks students to answer questions with a word beginning with the letter of the week. Depending on your class group you might give each student a copy of the questions to answer themselves, ask them to work in pairs or small groups or do it as a whole class. It’s a good idea to produce your own letter of the week worksheet geared to your own students with appropriate topics and number of questions. Once you have made it all you have to do is change the letter at the top each week! See the free download below for question ideas you might like to use.
I hope you found those ideas useful for your class, or maybe even for an upcoming holiday activity group. If you have any ideas you would like to share please do contact us – I love a new game to try in the classroom.
