Help yourself and help your students practice spelling for the next spelling bee, quiz, or unit test with these fun and simple games!

The problem with a lot of spelling games is that it will be one or two students practicing a word while the rest of the class just listens or watches. Either that or a whole class will be “working together” to spell one word. This pretty much guarantees that the kids who need the most practice don’t get any.

These 7 games are ones that the whole class can actually participate in while getting multiple chances to spell and read a word, so that students more readily store the words in long-term memory.

1. Mini-Whiteboards

Sometimes the simplest solutions really are the best. Split students into groups of two or three. Give each group a marker and a mini whiteboard. Shout out the spelling word. Students hold up their words when they’re finished. If they’re correct, give them a thumbs up. They can add a point to their whiteboard. If they’re wrong, give them a thumbs down and they don’t get a point.

At the end students add up their points!

Alternative 1: Mini-Whiteboards Plus Flashcards

Play the same game as above, but instead of telling students the words, show them a flashcard. This will also challenge their knowledge of the meaning of the word, not just their spelling. To make this even more challenging, you can try showing the flashcard quickly and then putting it away, challenging students to pay attention as well as remember the word and write it correctly.

Alternative 2: Mini-Whiteboards Plus Silence

Another way to make this game more interesting is by mouthing the words. Mouth a vocabulary word, but don’t say it out loud. Students must try to write and show you the correct word, all while trying to hide their guesses from their classmates.

2. Got iPads? Wordwall

If you are lucky enough to have iPads or Chromebooks in the classroom, then let the students play Anagrams on Wordwall. There are pre-made games, but you can also make your own. If you are using the free version (Basic Account), you’re only allowed to make a few games, so choose wisely.

(Even on the free version, you can edit a game an unlimited amount of times, so just make sure you choose Anagram as one of the games you make.)

3. Alphabet Magnets

It requires a small investment, but if you buy a bunch of plastic magnetic letters, you can give a pile of letters to each group in your class. Shout out a word. Let the groups race to put the word together correctly. Which team spells it correctly and fastest wins.

Students can use the letters at their desks if you have a big class and no space on the board. Alternatively, they can stick the words on the board if you have enough space for several teams to do so at once. Finally, you can also lend the students something like a metal tray for them to stick their words.

This works surprisingly well even with older kids. No one is too old for colors and magnets.

4. Spelling Quiz and Grab the Word

Give everyone a paper like this.

If you want a no prep version, then put this example on the board and have students use a scrap paper to make their own.

Now give them a normal spelling quiz. (For example, say “1 is oatmeal, 2 is mango, 3 is rice, etc.”)

When the quiz is finished, have them swap papers. Write the answers on the board. Have them check their partners’ papers.

Next students take their own papers back and make any necessary corrections.

Now the teacher goes around the room and takes every other spelling paper. (Try to leave students with the “nicer” papers that are easier to read and have fewer mistakes.)

Now put the students into partners so each pair of students is sharing one paper. Tell students to cut the papers up along the squares so that there is one word per slip of paper.

Finally, tell students to spread the words out in front of them. Now the teacher will call out a word (or a definition). The first student to grab the word gets to keep it. At the end the winners are the students with the most words.

5. Back Spelling

This game only works in classes where the students are comfortable with each other, so don’t do this on the first week of school.

Put the students into partners. Give one student a piece of paper.

The person with the piece of paper needs to look away. The other partner should look at the teacher. The teacher writes a spelling word on the board and after a few seconds, erases it.

Now the teacher says, “Go!”

The partner without the paper has to “write” the spelling word on their partner’s back with their finger. The other student writes the word on a piece of paper. Give everyone a few minutes to try, then quickly check their spelling and award points to partners who’ve written it correctly.

Repeat.

6. Write in 30 Seconds

Use YouTube to put a short timer on the board. Now put the students in pairs. Finally, say a spelling word, start the timer, and let them write the word as many times as they can before the timer goes off.

Whoever writes the word the most (and correctly) within the timer, gets a point.

7. Spell Down the Line

Have students sit in rows. This will be their teams. If the teams are uneven, like all the teams have five students, but one has 6, then you will need to find a way to make the teams even. I’ll give a few suggestions for this after I’ve explained the game.

Give a piece of paper to the first student in each row. Say a vocabulary word. The student writes the word, passes it back, and the next student writes the same word and passes it back. The first group to all write the word is the winner. The teacher needs to check that each student in the row wrote the word correctly before declaring the winner.

Repeat this several times, adding up points as you go.

I recommend allowing teams to help each other (i.e. stronger students telling weaker students how to spell the words) to avoid embarrassing situations for the weaker kids. You can also have students change chairs within their rows occasionally, so its not always the same students starting the spelling each time.

If you have an uneven number of students, you can do a few things. First, you can have the row with the most kids become helpers, choosing a different helper each time. So, the “extra” kid can help you check other teams’ spelling or help you say the next spelling words. Another option is having the rows with fewer students spell the words twice. For example, the last student in each row might have to write the word twice to make up for the advantage they have.

I hope these games help your students improve their spelling!

If you want to practice sentence structures in addition to spelling, then check out these games!