In order to diversify the usual classes in English and defuse the working environment in the classroom, teachers are encouraged to play games: spelling, lexical, grammatical. These games are based on the fact that students in a playful way can work out the material covered on the topic of the lesson. In this article, we will look at examples of games for mastering English spelling. You yourself can change the lexical content and the rules of the games depending on the level of knowledge of students and the topic of the lesson.
"Best"
The teacher divides the class into several teams with the same number of participants. If the study room is small, then it is best to divide the students into two groups, the participants of which are built in columns one at a time. The teacher acts as a leader. At the command "Start!" the host begins to dictate words on the topic covered. The task of the students is to run up to the blackboard with chalk in their hands and write the named word. And so on the relay. The team that completes the fastest and makes the fewest spelling mistakes wins.
Get your TEFL TESOL certification
Travel, work online, get a job abroad, or be
an EFL and ESL teacher in your country.
"Letters crumbled"
The game can be played both in teams and in the form of individual competitions. For this spelling game, the teacher has to prepare flashcards with letters that will be assembled into words. Each team is given the same number of words. On the command "Start", the players collect words from letters and translate them. The team that can do it faster and correctly translate the words wins.
Example:
- ontaunim? mountain? mountain
- baorwni? rainbow? rainbow
- ewrta? water? water
"Camera"
For this game, students must carefully look at the newly learned words for one minute and memorize their spelling. At the end of time, everyone closes textbooks and notebooks. The teacher calls one student to the board and calls the word that he must write. If someone notices a mistake in a word, then he goes to the blackboard and writes down the correct version of the word.
"Words with a specific letter"
The facilitator invites the players to look at the list of words, after which he calls any letter from the alphabet. The task of the students is to find as many words as possible with the named letter. The one who finds the most words wins.
Example:
letter W: wake, wait, walk, wall, want, war, warm, wash, watch, water, wave and so on.
"Word Formation"
The game can be played both in the form of individual competitions and in teams. The teacher writes a long word on the board and asks the students to make words from its letters in a certain amount of time. The player with the most words wins.
"Add Consonants"
The game can be played both as a team competition and as an individual. The teacher writes vowels or a combination of them on the board. The task of the players is to add consonants and get the maximum number of possible words. The team that finds all the variations of the words and also translates them wins.
Example:
words containing "EA" - tea, area, beat, east, easy, head, real, clean, cream, earth, scream and so on.
"Anagrams"
The facilitator distributes cards with words to the players. From them, students must make new words, changing only the order of the letters in them. The students write the resulting variations on the board along with their translation.
Example:
- thing (thing) - night (night),
- late (late) - tale (story),
- dog (dog) - god (god),
- miles (miles) - limes (limes),
- lamp (lamp) - palm (palm tree),
- listen (listen) - silent (quiet).
"Who is bigger?"
The game is played between two teams. At the command "Start!" Students write on the board as many words as possible from certain sections. For example: fruits, vegetables, furniture, sports games, months of the year and so on.
Example:
fruit - apple, avocado, apricot, banana, pineapple, pear, orange, plum, kiwi, lime, lemon, mango, melon, watermelon.
"Insert a letter"
The teacher writes down words with missing letters on the board, and the students, in turn, must fill in these gaps with the missing letters. The task can be complicated by the fact that the presenter will offer whole sentences from words with missing letters. Students must fill in the gaps and translate the resulting sentence.
Example:
- d*ll - dall,
- k*te - kite,
- t*ddy - teddy,
- b * ll - ball,
- bl*ck black,
- tr*in - train.
"Philwords"
The facilitator distributes printouts with tables to the players, in the cells of which there are letters, from which it is required to find and circle words on a specific topic and translate them. The one who finds all the words the fastest wins.
Example:
find words on the topic "Desserts": chocolate - chocolate, icecream - ice cream, jam - jam, sweets - sweets, fruits - fruits, cake - cake.
| H | C | I | C | E | C |
| O | S | R | U | I | R |
| O | W | F | C | T | E |
| O | E | S | A | S | A |
| L | E | T | K | E | M |
| A | T | E | G | A | M |
"Cryptor"
The teacher distributes printouts with the text in which there are missing words. Pictures are shown instead. Students need to replace the pictures with words and write them on the board. During this time, the rest of the class checks the spelling.
"Alphabet"
The class is divided into two teams of players and stands away from the board. The facilitator distributes to each team one set of letters of the alphabet. When the teacher pronounces any word, the students with the corresponding letters from it run to the blackboard and make up this word. The team that made it first gets the number of points according to the number of letters in the word.
"Honeycombs"
Players are divided into two or three teams. Depending on the number of teams on the board, the same long word is written two or three times. The participants of each team one by one run up to the board and write down one word vertically, which begins with a letter from the given word. For each correctly spelled word, the team receives one point. An additional three points are awarded to the team that completed the task first.
Example:
| P | E | N | C | I | L | P | E | N | C | I | L |
| E | A | I | R | C | A | A | A | A | A | M | I |
| O | S | C | I | E | K | L | R | T | P | A | B |
| P | T | E | M | C | E | A | T | I | I | G | R |
| L | E | E | R | C | H | O | T | I | A | ||
| E | R | E | E | N | A | N | R | ||||
| A | A | L | E | Y | |||||||
| M | L |
"Four Words"
The game is played as an individual competition. The teacher writes a four-letter word on the board. And the students, in turn, must write four words for each letter in a certain period of time. First, students write the words in their notebooks. The first one to complete the task writes the received words on the board. For each correctly written column, he receives four points. For the mistake made, one point is deducted and assigned to the student who corrects this mistake.
Example:
The word LAKE
L → letter, lamp, life, lunch.
A → act, advance, afternoon, apple.
K → kingdom, key, kitchen, kid.
E → education, egg, electric, eye.
"Stairs"
Relay students must build a ladder of words on the board. To do this, each player must write down a word that begins with the last letter of the previous word. Points are awarded for each letter in a word, which motivates students to come up with longer words. The team with the most points wins.
Example:
apple → earth → hammer → radiator → recognize → education
Finally
Spelling games can be introduced at different stages of an English lesson in order to facilitate the assimilation of spelling material, or to control the assimilation of the material by students. The competitive component of the game stimulates the activity of thought processes, develops logic, flexibility of thinking and memory.
Get your TEFL TESOL certification
Travel, work online, get a job abroad, or be
an EFL and ESL teacher in your country.
And in order to learn new teaching methods and improve your skills, you can take online TEFL / TESOL courses, which at the time of publication of the article are available at a 50% discount. Details on this webpage.