Spelling games and activities
for ESL kids lessons

Games and activities for teaching “Spelling” to ESL kids

I spy

The teacher says, “I spy with my little eye something that begins with B”. Students try to guess the object (e.g. “book”).

Letters spell race

Put students in pairs or small groups. Give each group the letters of the alphabet (either flashcard letters, letter blocks, even letters you have written onto small squares of paper – just as long as each group has all the letters of the alphabet).

The teacher shouts out a word and students must rush to get the letters in order to spell that word (e.g. r-e-d, f-i-n-g-e-r, etc.). You can only use words that don’t have more than one of the same letter. The group that gets the word first wins 1 point.

Simon says spell

Play the usual ‘Simon says’ game with your students but say only the first letter of objects in the classroom (e.g. “Simon says touch something beginning with B”) then students can touch objects beginning with that letter (e.g. ball, boot, back, board, bin, etc.). If a student makes a mistake s/he has to sit out until the next round.

Spelling bee

Have all your students stand at the front of the class. Give Student 1 a word to spell. The student orally spells the word and the teacher writes it on the board as it is being spelt. If the spelling is wrong the student is knocked out of the game. The last student standing is the winner. This also works well as a team game.

Stop the bus

All students need pencil and paper to play this game. The teacher writes a letter on the board, and shouts, “Start the bus!”. The students then write down as many words beginning with this letter as they can think of. When one student shouts out, “Stop the bus!” everyone has to stop writing. The students all get one point for each word. The student who has the most words wins an extra 2 points. This may or may not be the one who shouted, “Stop the bus!” (Submitted by Katie McArthur)

Unscramble

Write a word on the board that has all its letters mixed up (e.g. “lrocsmaos” = “classroom”). Students have to unscramble the word to win points – the first student to guess the word and put his/her hand up wins a point. This also works well as a team game.

Variation: use letter blocks / letter shapes instead of writing on the board.

Tic-tac-toe spell

Draw a basic tic-tac-toe grid on the white board with new vocabulary in each cell. Each word is missing one, two or three letters depending on students level. One student from each team is called up and must fill in the missing letter(s) and say the word aloud. The team with three in a row wins. (Submitted by Shawn)