Holiday Word Games

Once a week I teach Grade 8 Humanities at the middle school I worked at last year. Today we finished off our World Religion presentations and then did some holiday word games. I adapted a few popular games and created a mix up interactive game for the students.

Here is how it went:

Two teams.
Bucket of themed words (We did Holiday movies, songs and items, which I prepared last night)
First person draws a word and then has the choice to either:

1. Charades - Act it out
2. Catch Phrase - Speak but not use words on the card
3. Pictionary - Draw it
4. Hum (songs)

The only real catch was that once someone did one thing (for example, charades) no one on their team could do it again until all 4 choices had been used, then we 're start' again and they can choose any of the four methods to showcase the word.

If their team guessed, they got a point, if they didn't (within two mintues) then the other team could 'steal'

They LOVED IT!

My favourite moment was when one student, who never speaks or participates in class activities (english is not his first language and he also has some cognitive barriers that make communication challenging at times, especially with his peers) but he got up and not only participated, but when he drew his item (a star) and the team guessed, everyone cheered (even the opposing team) and high fived him! Inclusion... I loved it!

What a great day!

We also did 'scattegories' I prepared a chart last night that looked something like this:

Letters:
Something Red
Christmas Song
Christmas Sweet
Christmas Dinner Food
Christmas Movie
Something Green
Stocking Stuffer

So we would do it "BOGGLE' Style and choose a letter and they had 5 minutes to come up with words. The trick was, that if somone else picked the same word, no points. If they had a word no one else picked, they got a point.

Fun word games leading up to Winter Break!

Boggle Template

Another pintrest find: Free Boggle Template. This is great for fast-finishers, sponge, or for a TTOCs 'Bag of Tricks'

Source: classroomfreebies.com via sara on Pinterest

Also, see my previous post on Boggle Walls.

Boggle Wall

I found this online today and loved it so much, I wanted to share it with you.

I love word games, Boggle is one of my favourites. As a TTOC, it's a fun game to do writing letters on the board, or having handouts. In a classroom long term, you can set up a bulletin board or station for this type of game.

This site wrote:

Arrange letters on a wall (or a wall, desk, cabinet... I've seen some pretty nifty use of space with these!), embedding spelling words, sight words, vocabulary or "bonus" words for students to find using the same rules used to play Boggle. I love a comment on 4thGradeFrolics that suggested making one word using all the letters posted (related to something being taught in class or a seasonal concept) and challenging students to work on it when they have free time. You can change the letters at intervals and present a new challenge to students.

Pinterest has more examples.