Year after year no matter what grade I have taught, Guess My Number has been a favorite math game. I started thinking how can I work this into literacy? Last year teaching first grade I came up with Guess My Word. It was definitely a hit with my first graders and I made it so it can be a hit in your classroom as well.
Why I Love It As A Teacher
Not only is it easy (meaning low prep way) to review phonics skills, but it is:
- Highly engaging
- It gets everyone involved.
- Gets students intentional encoding practice, while also applying their word knowledge skills. This means their knowledge about the phonics skill being reviewed, plus knowledge about graphemes, vocabulary, and syllables.
- It creates intentional conversations about words- from their phonemes, graphemes, definitions, syllables, and how words relate to each other.
- It applies the concept of showing your thinking to the world of phonics.
Why My Students Loved It
- It is fun!
- The game has two versions and each requires a Word Wizard. This became a class job.
- They had a choice in words they picked so if not comfortable with a word they had options.
- They could take ownership of the game, especially true with the smaller gameboards.
How It Works
So yes, there are two versions to Guess My Word.
Version 1 is Find Word Wizard’s Word. Here the Word Wizard picked a word and told no one. The clues they give are about their word. Everyone else writes down a word they think the Word Wizard picked. Play continues until the Word Wizard’s word is known to all. This is an example of how it could go.
Version 2 is Last Word Standing. Here everyone but the Word Wizard picks a word. They don’t show the Word Wizard their word. Everyone stands up when they write their word. As the Word Wizard gives clues, students sit down when their word matches a clue. Play continues until there is one student or one word left standing. This is an example of how it could go.
Both versions require:
- A gameboard with pictures
- A Word Wizard (usually the teacher, but eventually students fill this role)
- Everyone else needs to pick a word and write it down.
- The Word Wizard gives clues about the words
- Everyone else works together to figure out what words match the clue the Word Wizard gave.
Want It In Your Classroom?
To make this game easy to replicate in your classroom, I made everything you need for just about any phonics skills taught Kindergarten to second grade. Yup, I have it covered from CVC words to R-controlled vowels and diphthongs for a total of 29 phonics skills.
Each phonics skill comes with 1 full gameboard (printable and digital) plus 2 small gameboards.
Plus to make things easy I included: Game examples and word clue examples, word key for each gameboard, encoding pages if don’t use whiteboards, and visual directions for students.
Grab your copy by clicking the picture below.
Want to Try It Out?
I made a premade Find the Word Wizard’s Word game for mixed CVCe words for you to try out. It is the Google Slide™ gameboard, but the whole game is prepped and ready to play. I have the word picked, clues made and words crossed off for each clue. Just download to use in your classroom. You can easily play it and then move the x’s on the board to pick another word.
Click the picture to get your free game to try out.
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