“Hannah’s Letter Game”

A few weeks ago, Hannah was on the hunt for an activity for one of our lessons. She came across a game that we all loved, and I now refer to it as “Hannah’s Letter Game.” For this game, the supplies needed are many small paper squares and pens. We usually just cut up some of our scrap paper that we have lying around. These pieces of paper are about 1 square inch.

To play this game, we divide the group/ class into several teams. Each person on each team receives 5 of the paper squares. They are instructed to write one English letter on each square. They can choose any letters they want. Then, the teams bring all of their squares together and begin the game. The object of the game is to use all of the letters to make English words. It’s kind of like speed Scrabble. You can have the students play this two different ways: the students can make words in a grid (like Scrabble) where the letters can be used more than once (i.e. the “e” in a horizontal “anger” can double as the “e” in a vertical “pet”) OR you can require the students to use the letters only once.

Again, this game can be used with all levels, depending on how much vocabulary the students know. It’s a big hit and is very useful when you need an activity to take up a little bit of time. We have even used both variants of the game for one class.