Playing with Words: Word Study Games to Engage Students

Many scholars argue that we learn best when are given chances to be playful and creative with what we are learning. This article makes the case for word play and proposes variations of popular games to make word study fun, memorable, and engaging for students.

A Traditional Word Study Approach

I think we are all familiar with traditional approaches to word study—whether they are phonics, spelling, or vocabulary. In my own mind’s eye, I see a list of words, usually between 10 to 20.

The task was for me and my classmates to learn the spelling and pronunciation of these words, or to look the words up in a dictionary, and write out and memorize the definitions for a test that occurred at the end of the week. This routine happened week in and week out over the course of my schooling.

I’m not sure what I learned from these exercises except that word study was a tedious, meaningless, and often boring task. Although I usually received a relatively high score on the tests, I don’t have any memory of applying my work in any authentic task.

A Gaming Word Study Approach

What I do have fond memories of is getting together with family members over the holidays and getting out the old Scrabble game and spending hours upon hours playing and chatting with aunts and uncles and cousins over the Scrabble board.

In fact, my wife noticed a few years ago just how many games we play today with our family members that are word-related games—Scrabble, Boggle, Balderdash, Password, Code Word, Wheel of Fortune®, and many more.

Benefits of Word Games

If as adults we love these games that deal with words, why wouldn’t students? My sense is that students would love to engage in playing with words, whether in their classrooms with their classmates and their teacher, or virtually with each other.

Additionally, you’ve probably noticed that if you play a game regularly over a period of time your performance usually gets better; if it’s a game your score improves! Well, we have a special name for it when you get better at something over time. It’s called learning! If you want students to learn words, then create opportunities for them to play with words.

Three Fun Activities for Word Play

There are ways that you can help your students play with words and, at the same time, increase their engagement with, understanding of, and appreciation for words. Here are three of my favorite activities that allow your students (and yourself) to be playful with words.

Wordo!

This vocabulary version of Bingo is a wonderful way for students to play with new words and experience the words through simultaneous use of oral and written language. Materials you will need include

• a blank Wordo! card for each student
• a set of 9 to 20 words (these may be words from a particular content area, words belonging to word root family, or simply words you want your students to learn)
• counters or markers to mark spaces on the card

Write the words you have chosen on the board. Provide a Wordo! card for each student. Then have them choose words from the list on the board and write one word in each of the remaining boxes. Students choose whatever box they wish for each word.  

The teacher or prompter states or reads a clue for each word. The clue can be a definition, a synonym, an antonym, or a sentence with the target word deleted. Students need to figure out the correct target word and mark its space. When a student has a full a row, column, diagonal, or four corners marked, he or she calls out, “Wordo!”

Check the student’s words and declare that student the winner or continue game play. Once a winner is declared, have students clear their sheets and play another round. The winner of the first game can be the one to call out clues.

Word Ladders

A Word Ladder is an activity in which you lead students to writing a series of words. Each new word is based off an alteration of the previous word (add a letter, remove a letter, change a letter, reorder the letters, etc.). In my own version of Word Ladders, the first and last words are somehow related. As the teacher, you lead your students through the process of making the list of words, giving them meaning and word structure cues along the way.

Here’s an example of a Word Ladder (ideal for November) that begins with the word thanks and ends with the word grateful.

Start with:

As a bonus, once you reach the final word grateful, you can tell your students that the word root grat/grac means thanks. Then challenge them to come up words, beside grateful, that contain this root and that refer to the concept of thanks

• grace
• gracious
• gratuity
• congratulate
• gratuity
• ingrate
• gracias

It is truly not that difficult to make your own Word Ladders (nor is it a requirement that the first and last words connect in some way). Indeed, after completing Word Ladders for a while, your students themselves can be challenged to make their own. On my website, I have several Word Ladders that I have written and that go with different times during the school year.  

Be the Bard

We all know that Shakespeare was a prolific writer of plays and poetry. What is less well known is that the Bard was an inventor of new words. In fact, approximately 10% of all the words Shakespeare ever used in his writing were words that he invented. Words such as premeditated, inaudible, skim milk, bedroom, lackluster, eyeball, and downstairs were all introduced into English by Shakespeare. If you look closely at these words, you’ll notice that several of them are compound words. He took words or roots that already existed and combined them with one another to make new words and concepts. It seems to me that if you want to become proficient in English, Shakespeare is pretty good guy to study and emulate. If Shakespeare can invent words, why shouldn’t our students? And they can!

I have found that if you use a roots approach to teaching words (teaching and learning words that are derived primarily from Greek and Latin roots) students can easily combine roots they have studied to make new words and concepts. Here are just few words, and their meanings, that students have invented.

benemater: bene = good; mater = mother               A good mother

philaphone: phil= love; phon(e) = sound                  A love of sounds (music lover)

teleterra:   tele: distant; terra = land                          A distant land

Be the Bard is a great way to encourage creativity and divergent thinking in students. Once students invent a word, you can have them challenge their classmates to come up with the meaning of the words. If classmates know their roots, they usually can determine the meaning of the new words. Having students create words can be challenging at first, but with practice it is amazing how good students can become at making up words. And, who knows? Perhaps, like Shakespeare, some of the words students invent may actually become part of the English language!

When our students are given chances to be playful and creative with what they are learning, whether it is science, baseball, or words, they are more likely to enjoy and retain that learning. Let’s make word study joyful and engaging for all students with word play and word study games.