Fun Ways to Practice Spelling Words

Another week, another spelling list. For schools who follow traditional spelling curriculums, this is the ever-present reality. As a teacher, it can be easy to view spelling class as an area to put in very little extra effort. And in many ways, that’s necessary for survival. One simply cannot pour boundless time and energy into every single class.

But there are some fairly quick and relatively easy ways to spice spelling class up from time to time. As spelling is a class that can quickly lend itself to repetition and boredom, your students will be grateful for the occasional change of pace.

Change the Medium

Simple repetition in writing the words again and again is an effective way to learn how to spell words correctly. However, that can quickly get tedious for students. Don’t underestimate the power of simply changing the medium with which children are writing.

Here are a few ideas:

• Divide your chalkboard into sections and let each student write their spelling list on their section of chalkboard. (Bonus practice: have them check another student’s section for mistakes).

• Give each student a small whiteboard and dictate words one at a time for them to write. (Individual-sized whiteboards can usually be found at dollar stores, and they are a worthwhile investment for your classroom in general. You can use them for math practice, history/science review, etc.) The benefit is that you can have students hold up their answers to show you, and you will get immediate feedback on which students understand a concept and which ones are struggling.

  o   Pro tip: buy a pack of dollar store socks—then each student has an eraser, too. You can put a marker inside each sock for easy storage and distribution.

• Go outside with sidewalk chalk and dictate words for your students to write.

• If your school has a smooth concrete wall somewhere, give each student a paintbrush and a cup of water. Then dictate words for them to “paint” on the wall. (This could work on a chalkboard, too, but you may not have enough space for everyone).

• If you’re willing to embrace a bit of mess in order to give your students an extra fun and memorable experience, spray shaving cream over their desks. Once they’ve smoothed it out, they can use their fingers to write spelling words as you dictate to them. This also works with chocolate pudding (spread over parchment paper on each desk).

  
  

Mennonite Manners

This game goes by many other names, such as “Steal the Pen,” “100 Game,” and “Pen and Dice Challenge.” In my community, it was called “Mennonite Manners” and was a common birthday party game. The original game has players writing the numbers from 1-100, but I adapted it for spelling class.

Here’s how you play:

• Break into groups of 3-5.

• Each person has a sheet of paper and must write their entire spelling list.

• Only one pen exists.

• A pair of dice is passed around; if you roll doubles, you grab the pen.

• While you have the pen, you keep writing as fast as you can until someone else rolls doubles and takes the pen from you.

• Each time you get the pen, you pick up where you left off in writing out your spelling list. The first person to complete their spelling list wins.

  
  

BINGO (for vocabulary words)

BINGO is a classic game for a reason—it’s simple, requires few supplies, and it’s fun!

You will want to create a grid of squares for your students to write their vocabulary words into, one word for each square in the grid. This works best if your amount of vocabulary words is a number with a perfect square, such as 9, 16, or 25. If you have an amount of vocab words that is close to one of those, you can make this game work. Simply adjust accordingly.

• If you have one or two more words than spaces in your grid, students will simply not use all of the words. For example, if you have 10 vocabulary words, give your students a 3x3 grid. They will have one word that they don’t include in their grid.

• If you have one or two fewer words than spaces in your grid, allow your students to have a FREE space. For example, if you have 15 vocabulary words, give your students a 4x4 grid, and they may have one FREE space, placed wherever they wish.

  
  

Students should write their vocabulary words into the squares in a random order. This is important so that each student has a unique BINGO card.

Give them small objects like buttons, Cheerios, or candy to use as markers.

Call out the vocab definitions in a random order. Give them a moment to think and place a marker on the correct square. Then say the answer (this helps them get practice as you play the game). If they placed their marker on the wrong word, they must remove it. At this point, you could say the word and definition together in unison, to maximize how much learning and memorization is happening.

Continue calling out definitions until a student fills in a complete row or column and calls “Bingo!” At that point, everyone will clear their boards and you will start all over again.

As the one calling out the definitions, you will find it helpful to have a list of all the words and definitions that you can mark up as you go. Your goal is to call the words randomly, saying each word once before you start repeating words you’ve said before. It can be hard to keep track of this in your head. Have a pen handy to mark the words as you say them. Since you’ll play multiple rounds, an easy way to keep your sanity is to put a checkmark beside each word as you say it. When you start repeating words, you can put a second checkmark beside the word, and a third, and so on. This helps you easily see which words you’ve called recently. 

Fill in the Blanks

This is a way to turn practicing spelling words into a fun challenge, while also helping your students to really think about the order of the letters in the words they are spelling.

Prepare a worksheet beforehand by writing your spelling words as a series of blanks (one blank for each letter in the word) and filling in a few of those blanks.

For example, if your spelling words are receive, saturate, and beautiful, your worksheet might look something like this:

c v _

s  t _ e

e  t  l

Each student will have a copy of the worksheet. You’ll then go through, word by word, randomly revealing letters until a student can guess what the word is. So for the first word, receive, you might say, “Last letter, e. First letter, r. Second letter, e.” Pause after each clue to allow the students time to fill in the letter in the correct spot on their worksheet. At any point, students may call out a guess of what the word is. Once someone has correctly identified the word, everyone fills in any remaining missing letters, and you can all spell it together in unison.

Then you’d move on to the next word. You might say, “Second-last letter, t. Both the first and the third-last letters are a,” etc.

There’s something intrinsically enjoyable about approaching spelling words as little puzzles. But the real beauty in this game is the way it forces students to think about the composition of the letters. In the examples above, for the word beautiful, filling it in letter by letter would help them to really think about the tricky “eau” combination.

Relay

For this game, you’ll want to break your students into groups of 2-3. Each group will need to gather around a shared piece of paper or the chalkboard. Every student should have either a pencil or piece of chalk in their hand.

You will call out a spelling word, and the group must work together, one student at a time, to write the word. When it is a particular student’s turn, they have one of two choices: either they may write one letter, or they may correct a letter that someone else wrote. In this way, they will spell the word as a team, one letter at a time.

The first group to finish gets a point, and you can spell the word orally together before moving on to the next word.