Word Play

Is it any surprise that I love word play?

When I was teaching my own class, I embedded word play into the routine of the day, typically after a recess break. I would write a word puzzle, challenge, or riddle on the board for students to work on as they were settling back into class. In this context I called them Brain Benders and students would complete the activity in a Brain Bender notebook.

When I was an administrator, I often supervised a wing of the school during lunch. As I walked from class to class, I would put some kind of word play on the board for students to talk about and try to solve while they were eating. Most often, by the time I made my way back around to each class, they were excited to tell me the solution.

Whatever your context or role, here are a few ideas to get you started!

For these word riddles, students have to figure out what the letters represent:

• 26 L of the A
• 88 K on a P
• 18 H on a GC

You can also ask students to generate a long list of… (pick one!)

• outdoor sports
• crayon colours
• jobs for dogs
• uses for paperclips
• things made out of plastic
• words that begin with the blend sl (or any grapheme you want to reinforce)
• compound words
• adjectives that might describe a spider

On another day, put up a jumbled word. Challenge students to find the word which uses all of the letters but they can also make as many other words as they can using the letters provided. Choose a content area vocabulary word to reinforce what you are already doing in class. For example:

• nmateg (The word using all of the letters is magnet, but students could also make words such as: at, ate, eat, game, gate, get, gnat, mate, meat, name, neat, net, tame, tan, team, ten…)
• myecadocr (The word using all of the letters is democracy but students could also make words such as: car, came, code, come, dome, dye, may, mode, race, ray, road, roam, rod, rode, yard…)

Although we call this word play, we can be intentional about reinforcing many concepts during this time!