Word Games for Beginners

Matt Porter

PROCEDURE:

1. Warm up the class by asking students to say the alphabet (forwards, backwards, every other letter, starting from a certain letter) or count (up, down, multiples). If your students are comfortable with writing on the chalkboard, you can ask them to write the alphabet as fast as they can (lower case, upper case, cursive). A fun competition is to see if the student can write the alphabet faster than you can write hiragana!
2. Before class, write down a list of ten words with a common theme. Then enter them into the Internet Anagram Server (http://www.wordsmith.org/anagram) to get a list of readable, yet nonsensical, words. For example, the anagram for baseball is “blabseal.” Hand out the anagram worksheets and have the students sound out each word, syllable by syllable. Then have them guess what word the letters actually make.
3. Next, hand out word search worksheets. Pronounce each word and then let the students begin. Puzzlemaker (http://puzzlemaker.school.discovery.com/chooseapuzzle.html) is a great website that makes the word search for you after inputting the words. I like Word Search with a Hidden Message. You can reuse the same words from anagrams or use the same theme. Prizes can be given to the students who finish fastest.

NOTES:

I teach at a low-level school and these games help my students remember basic skills instead of repeating and forgetting information they will never use.