What is word building game

Asked by: Phoebe Kohler

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Put your spelling skills to the test! Roll the two letter dice and use the letters on the dice and your letter keys to make a word. Flip over any keys used, the first player to flip over all 10 letter keys wins the game. For Example: If you roll the letter R and the letter A.

How is Scrabble played?

Scrabble is a game that is played by 2, 3 or 4 people. It uses a board with squares on it (15×15) and a large number of letters on small tiles. Each player, when it is his/her turn, has to put a word on the board, using any of the seven letters (seven tiles) that they have in front of them.

How do you start a Scrabble game?

All players draw seven new letters and place them on their racks. The first player combines two or more of his or her letters to form a word and places it on the board to read either across or down with one letter on the center square. Diagonal words are not allowed.

What is word building game?

This Word Building game helps foster greater intelligence and thinking amongst little children and can actually keep them engrossed happily for hours. … Your child will learn word formation will having fun. This is an educational play set and can be played with one or two persons as a word game in different direction.!!

What is a scramble game?

Word Scramble is a challenging vocabulary game for kids. This game is designed to help kids practice their spelling and learn new words. … They must rearrange the given letters to form the word. This game is a great way to help kids build, test and enhance their vocabulary and spelling skills.

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Word building is a critical phonics activity. Students will develop word awareness skills as they explore and play with letter sounds to build words.  Make sure to download the letter building cards and word building activities in this post.

One thing I love about teaching is that there is always the opportunity to learn, grow and become better.  This past year I have spent a lot of time reading the work of Wiley Blevins.  I’ve learned so much about phonics instruction and come to realize that there are aspects of the way I taught phonics that I would now change and improve.  

One of my main takeaways from Blevins’ book, A Fresh Look at Phonics, is the importance of providing students with lots of opportunities for review and repetition in order to ensure they actually master the skills that we teach!   

I realized that in my own teaching (and I confess!) I was guilty of exposing my students to a phonics skill, taking them through my weekly word study routine, and then moving onto the next skill the following week.  I’m afraid I wasn’t giving them enough practice to ensure mastery. 

Even if you know you need to provide this extra practice, it can be a challenge to come up with activities that effectively meet your needs. In his book Phonics from A to Z, Wiley Blevins suggests using word sorts and word building activities as a way to allow students to explore and play with letter sounds.  

In my last blog post I shared all about word sorts, so today I’m excited to provide you with information about word building activities and share some resources to help get you started with these critical routines.

What are Word Building Activities?

In word building, students are given a set of letter cards and asked to create a series of words in a specified sequence.  Usually, each new word varies by only one sound-spelling from the previous word.  For example, students may build the following words in sequence:  sat, hat, hop, mop.  Each new word varies from the one before it by only one sound-spelling.  

There are two types of word building activities, each with their own instructional purpose.  

1. Word Building: Blending Focus  In this type of word building students are asked to make a word, such as cat.  Then they would be asked to change the letter c to s and read the new word formed.  The goal here is for them to blend, or sound out the new word. You can include many words with the new target phonics skill and also include previously taught skills. 

1. Word Building:  Word Awareness Focus  Here, students are asked to make a word such as cat, and then told to change it to hat.  This requires a lot more thinking than blending-focused work.   Students have to think about how the two words are different and which sound must be changed in order to form the new one.  

Both of these word-building activities can be done with the same set of words, so incorporating both into your week gives your students good practice and saves you planning time! 

Word Building Routines

The routine for word building is simple!  First, introduce the task by naming it and explaining the purpose.  

Next, MODEL!  Place letter cards in a pocket cart to form the first word you are building.  Model sounding out the word.  As you build new words, be sure to include the new target sound-spelling as well as words with review sound-spellings.  Use minimal contrasts to ensure students fully analyze the words and notice their unique differences.  For example, sat/hat, mop/map, mad/made, cot/coat.

Download a set of these large letter cards for your pocket chart here!

Finally, provide opportunities for guided and independent practice.   Continue to change one or more letters in a word and have students chorally blend the new word formed.  

Make sure to have a word list prepared before the lesson in order to keep on track with the focus skill and review skills previously taught.

If you are working on word awareness (instead of blending) tell students what the next word is in the sequence and have them form it on their own.  After giving them time, form the new word on the pocket chart and model your thinking aloud. 

If you have fairly strong word building and word sorts routines in place, an engaging exercise to continue the development of word awareness is Word Ladders.  

Word ladders are a fun and challenging word activity for students, and a great one to use towards the end of the week once they have had a lot of exposure to the word pattern. Since word ladders are self-checking they are perfect to use in an independent literacy center.

Phonics Word Building Activities

Today I’m thrilled to share with you my very own Phonics Word Building Activities!  These DIFFERENTIATED activities are both printable and digital so you can use them in the classroom or for distance learning with Google Classroom & Seesaw! 

Students will listen to the AUDIO directions (from yours truly!) and then build words in a specified sequence. Each new word only varies by one sound spelling from the previous word. Students press the audio button to hear me state the word to build, blend the phonemes of the word, say the word again, and use it in a sentence to develop vocabulary.  

This resource includes: 

• 31 teacher-directed digital word building lessons
• 31 printable word building lessons
• master word list

Each of the 31 lessons focuses on one phonetic pattern: 

• Short Vowel (CVC) Words
• Digraphs
• Blends
• Long Vowels
• Diphthongs
• R-Controlled Vowels
• Complex Vowels

Get started now by downloading your FREE phonics word building activities here: 

Word Ladders

This resource includes both printable and digital word ladders that require students to think critically to figure out the next word to build, using letter or picture clues for support!  Students will change just one letter to build a new word.

Included in this resource are 42 word activities- enough to last you the entire year! 

Included Phonics Patterns:

• CVC Words
• Digraphs
• Blends
• Long Vowels
• Diphthongs
• R-Controlled Vowels
• Complex Vowels

Both of the Phonics Word Building activities and the Word Ladders provide students explicit and systematic practice.  All of the activities in both of the resources are based on Wiley Blevins’ recommended scope and sequence for K-2 students.  You can be confident that they are developmentally appropriate and provide the scaffolding students need for mastery.  

EASY TO PREP AND MANAGE! 

One of the major pitfalls with some word sorts is that they often require a lot of small pieces of paper, letter cuts, or word cards.  They can take a long time to prep, distribute, and collect! 

But NOT these activities! The printable pieces require very few cuts for students. There will be NO TIME wasted dealing with materials!

The digital versions have been PRELOADED for you.  With 1 click you add them to your Seesaw library or Google Drive and then you can assign them to your students for remote learning or individual centers!

Another BONUS is that the structure of each activity in both of these resources remains the same. This saves you from having to explain and model every time you assign one!  Once your students have successfully completed one, you can be sure they’ll be able to independently work through the rest at whatever pace you assign them! 

I hope the Phonics Word Building Activities and the Word Ladders I’ve shared today will help you provide your students with meaningful practice that will help them to develop their word awareness and master their phonics skills!  

–PIN for LATER–

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Two years ago, I designed and Kickstarted a word-building game called Movable Type, which went on to win the Irish Game Designers’ Association (Imirt) award for Best Analogue Game 2016 and the British Library Lab Award for Best Commercial Product. Since then, I have also made and funded a second edition of the game. In doing so, I’ve come to a few realisations about what elements can make a stand-out word game in both the analogue and digital game spaces. This list is by no means authoritative or definitive, but more like a set of prompts to help in your own game-design process.

Before going any further, it’s worth clarifying that I am going to be talking about word-building games, like Scrabble or Alphabear, that require you to use letter cards or tiles to create words. These are distinct from word guessing games, like Codenames or Heads Up, which are games based on inferential skills — I may look at those kind of games in another post.

Movable Type combines word-building with card-drafting, reducing downtime and creating strategic opportunities.

Word-Building is One Mechanic in a Richer Game

My mantra in game design is “find the fun” — and aside from the satisfaction derived from making a big word, word-building alone is rarely fun. Word-building is usually the least interesting mechanic in a word-building game — players have seen it done so many times before that it rarely excites them. While word-building can serve as an easy point of entry for less-experienced players, most good word-building games go beyond this mechanic, integrating it with something more interesting and strategic.

For the sake of illustration, here are how some particularly good word-building games integrate other mechanics in order to “find the fun”:

1. Scrabble (and it’s many spin-offs like, Words with Friends), has a basic form of territory control, as players try to hit the bonus spaces on the board, and simultaneously try to deny their opponents the chance to get these same spaces. It also awards players for creating multiple words at once, usually by making a bunch of two-letter words. Having a good vocabulary is important, but being able to control the board is where the interesting strategies lie.
   

   Controlling the Triple Word Score is the key to victory in Scrabble.

    

2. Paperback and Dexikon are word-building games which use elements of deck-building games. That means that players have to “buy” more valuable letters to use in the future by playing high value words in earlier rounds. It’s a mechanic that mimics the feel of leveling up in an RPG.
3.  Alphabear has the player uncovering the board as they play, trying to clear connected areas by playing specific tiles before they become locked.
   

   Each tile has a timer and gives access to more territory. Using the right tile at the right time is important.

    

4. My own game, Movable Type, uses two kinds of card-drafting mechanics — a 7 Wonders style pick-and-pass card drafting at the start of each round and tableau drafting at the end of each round. Over time, players are collecting the letters that they need to play killer words later in the game. So there is long term and short term strategising, mixed in with word building.
5. In WYPS, players are trying to play words so that they can build paths of their own colour between the three edges of the board, making it feel a little like the brilliant abstract game, Tak. It also means there is no scoring in this game, which is refreshingly different.
6. Konexi implements a Jenga style dexterity element, so long words might score a lot, but may be harder to place onto the developing word tower.

   

    

7. Bookworm Adventures implements combat into word-building. When players use certain letters, they attack their opponent’s character, knocking that opponent’s health down.
8. Letter Tycoon has players buying “stocks” and “patents” relating to certain letters, so they get payouts whenever certain letters are used. Rather than just trying to play the best words, players are trying to get rich off their investments.
   

   If you patent a letter in Letter Tycoon, you’ll earn money when other players use it.

    

9. Unspeakable Words has a push-your-luck element to it. The longer your word, the better your score, but then you must roll a 20-sided dice — if it shows a value lower than your score, you lose a life. If you lose all five lives, you’re out!

The point is that there needs to be something beyond simple word-building for the fun to latch on to. The word-building is almost always front and centre, but these other elements and mechanics are the spice that brings your game to the next level. Without this spice, your game is only going to appeal to a very thin slice of the gaming population.

Downtime is a Killer

Word-building can take time and player turns in a word-building game have the potential to be very long. A long turn often means things get quite boring for the other players!

When playing paperback Paperback, no matter how much I enjoyed the deck-building mechanic, the amount of downtime really soured me to the experience. I spent about 75% of the game just waiting for my turn.

If simultaneous play is possible, it should be embraced. Otherwise, consider the use of a timer, increasing access to more letters (so words are easier to build), or reducing the stakes for each turn (so playing the best word is not so important). 

Shared or Unique Letters

Having a unique hand letters for each player introduces an element of chance, which can be very painful in a word game — drawing a hand of vowels may well leave the player with no effective moves. Conversely, having a shared pool of letters can create more interactivity and allow player to one-up each other — such as in Boggle or Wordsy. In these games, all players start on equal footing and there’s no way luck can favour one of the other. A lot of games compromise by a having some common letters, to create a reasonably even playing field, in addition to a hand of letters for each player — examples would include Movable Type, Letter Tycoon, and Scrabble.

In Wordsy, everybody plays with the same letters, so there are no unfair draws.

Challenging a Word Should be Possible

This mainly applies to analogue games, where players have to police the legality of words played by one another. First of all, it should be established which kinds of words are allowed in the game — most word games disallow slang and proper nouns. Challenging words which break the rules must be interesting. There should be both a reward for correctly challenging a word (this reward could be in the form of penalising the other player) and a penalty for incorrectly challenging one. If a player can play fake words with impunity, then there isn’t much of a game.

It boggles my mind how anyone enjoys Boggle!

Letter Distribution Matters

In the first edition of Movable Type there are too few vowels, which leads to a lot of tactical play — it’s possible to deny your opponents the letters that they need and it’s important to bank vowels early. This was on purpose, but some players balked at the idea. For the second edition, there is a optional deck of vowels to ensure that each round has vowels among the shared letters. This small change leads to big changes in the tone of the game.

A word game may also needs to address doubled consonants and common letter pairings like “Qu”. Movable Type only gives a limited number of letter cards to each player, so they are allowed to double any card (they could play “Raccoon” with only an R, A, C, O, and N). Players can also use the Q card as either a Q or a Qu. Initially, the design only allowed players to double some specific letters, like the Z, but while I was finding the fun, it became apparent that doubling any letter was a better solution. It gives players more options and leads to fun and tricky plays.

Finally, the quantities of each letter and the score assigned to each letter (if any) affects what other languages the game can be played in. Other languages will have letters that are more prominent and easier to use. Even if a language uses the Roman script, they may have fewer letters — Tagalog, for example, does not use the letter F, V, C, J, Z, or X. Some word games are playable in multiple languages, provided the players remove specific letters before play — both to remove unused letters and even out the distribution. You will most likely find that you need a unique letter distribution for each language you choose to publish your game in.

FAQ: Vocabulary Games

Here are answers to common questions about vocabulary games and activities.

What are vocabulary games?

Vocabulary games are word and language games you can play with students, coworkers, or family and friends. These games challenge players to hunt for words or definitions, brainstorm terms, deduce phrases based on clues, or create words under certain conditions. Language games are a great way to teach new vocabulary and help students practice recognizing and using new words. These activities are also known as “vocabulary building games” and “vocab games”, and are similar to “word games” and “letter games”.

What are some fun word games for groups?

Some fun word games for groups include Pictionary, Tree or Bob Ross, and word scrambles.

What are some online vocabulary games?

By using virtual meeting software like Zoom, you can play any word game online. Some good virtual vocabulary games include Scrabble, Scattergories, and online crossword puzzles.

What are good ESL word games?

The best ESL word games are easy to understand and play yet expand the vocabularies of participants. Good ESL word games include word association, word searches, and hangman.

What are fun ways to teach vocabulary?

Word games are one of the most fun and easy ways to teach vocabulary. While some kids get frustrated with straightforward reading or language exercises, word games disguise vocabulary lessons as a fun challenge. Plus, playing language games together is a great teamwork exercise.