Teacher Resources » Games to teach English spelling

Games are a great way to teach as well as review spelling. There are ways other than the traditional Spelling Bee to make spelling learning interesting. The following are some fun games to make your English class exciting!

1. Cut-and-Paste Spelling

Give each of your students a page from a newspaper. Ask them to cut out letters from the headlines, advertisements and other big-lettered text. Get them to clue to those letters on a sheet of paper to spell words that have been taught or are tested. Those who finish making the words first and correctly will be the winners of the game.

This game can be done in groups also, and students will have fun interacting with each other and making words on the sheet of paper.

This can also be given as a homework assignment.

2. Back-to-Back Spelling

Students are divided into pairs. Each student in a pair writes the given word on the other student’s back with a finger. The partner must find out what word the other one has written just by guessing and thinking about how the letters are being formed. After finding out the word, the partner has to say the word aloud. This has to be repeated with the other student also.

3. Erasing words

Write about ten words that the students have recently learnt as a list on the board. Give the class a minute to memorize or to ‘photograph’ the words in their mind. Then point out one word, and erase it. The students have to write it down in their notebooks from their memory. Do this until all the words have been erased, and students have written down all of them in their notebooks. Check the spellings. Those who have got the maximum correctly are the winners.

4. Words beginning with .....

Divide the students into groups. Give a letter and ask each group to write down as many words as they can that begin with that letter, within two minutes. After two minutes, students stop writing. Ask each group to read out their words, with the spelling. Each correct word gets one point. The group that has the maximum number of correctly spelt words are the winners.

5. Words out of .....

Write a few letters on the board. Be sure to include some vowels. Ask students to make words out of them within a time limit. With an elementary class, it is crucial to give additional directions. For example, you could write the following letters on the board:

M Y O C N K A E T G D G

Ask the students to make names of animals using these letters, within two minutes. With these words they might make these words:

MONKEY
CAT
GOAT
DOG
ANT

Students who make the maximum number of words and spell them correctly within two minutes are the winners.

In an advanced English classroom, there is no need to limit the game to any particular theme like animals. It can be free form, and students can be asked to make any word, as long as it is an English word.