Superghosts Spelling Game

Super Ghosts Spelling Game

Don’t be put off by how long the explanation of this game is.

Take it steady and learn as you go because not only is this game is an absolute winner, it’s also very educational and makes spelling fun. Once you’ve played it once with your class they will want to play it over and over again. Not only will this game help your kids become better at spelling and word knowledge, but it will also teach them how to bluff their way out of trouble!

Basis of the Game:

The basis of the game is simple. One of the teams starts off with a letter of the alphabet. The next team adds a letter to the first one so that the two letters make up a part of a real word. The next team adds a third letter so that the three letters are part of a real word as well. But here’s the kicker, once there are three letters on the board, the idea is to keep adding letters contained in a real word WITHOUT COMPLETING a word. The completed word might have nothing to do with the intended word, but that doesn’t matter, it’s still a completed word and not allowed in the game.

Requirements:

• The game works best with the class broken up into five teams of relatively even spelling ability. Each team has a captain and the captain is the only one who can tell the teacher (moderator) what the team’s letter is. The team’s job is to advise the captain on what to say.

• The teacher acts as moderator and updates the team bodies on the board, as well as writing up the current word being built and writing the list of used words used during the game session.

• The teacher is also the timer who allows each group seven seconds to answer. There’s a five second warning and then if the group hasn’t responded within two seconds of that warning, the group will lose a part of its body. A group at the end of the five seconds warning can claim their Extra Time allocation which gives them an extra five seconds to answer before losing a part of their body. Once a team loses all of its three body parts, it becomes a “ghost” and can’t partake in the rest of the game session.

Rules:

• The minimum length word that can be counted as a complete word must have at least three letters in it. Two letter words don’t count.

• A group can “bluff” by adding a letter even if they have no idea of what the word is. This then leaves it up to the next group to either challenge “What’s your word?” – OR – they can bluff too by adding another letter.

• As each group loses a part of its body, the teacher must ascertain what the word being built was and add it to the list of already used words for the session. A word can only be used once in a session.

• Letters can be added before or after the letter group already being built – this encourages the use of prefixes and word-building in general.

• In a “What’s your word?” challenge, the group being challenged must know how to use the word in a sentence. This encourages the discovery of new words.

• Proper nouns must not be used. So for example “giraffe” is OK but “Gerald” is not. Similarly, “ocean” is okay but “Atlantic” is not.

• Slang words are not allowed unless the teacher (as moderator) thinks the slang word has virtually become a bona-fide word in our language.

• Abbreviations are allowed if they have basically become a word in their own right – like “app” which is an abbreviation for “application”.

• No foreign language words are allowed unless they are a bona-fide part of our language e.g. faux meaning fake. Again the teacher, as moderator makes the decision.

• Once a group loses all of its body parts, they become a Ghost and cannot participate further in the session. They must not communicate in any way with any other teams during the rest of the session. Besides they might learn some new words if they watch what the remaining teams do.

• No electronic devices can be used as reference during the course of a session.

• At the teacher – moderator’s discretion. Certain “killer words” can be banned for a particular session and be written up as dead words even before the session starts!

The Challenges:

• A challenge can be made by any team during the course of play even if it’s not their turn. If the team challenging is mistaken, they lose a part of their body and the play goes back to the team whose turn it was next.

• Challenge – what’s your word? If the challenged team says a word that’s correct, the challenging team can try other challenges.

• Challenge – spelling.

• Challenge – completed word.

• Challenge – use your word in a sentence.

• Challenge – dead word. The word has already been used in the session.

• Challenge – proper noun.

Scoring:

If you play this game once or twice per week, you can create a term long competition that becomes very exciting as the competition continues. With five teams playing I used to allocate four points for the winner, three points for the team that came second, two points for the team that came third and one point each for the teams that got knocked out early. In this way a team can be docked a point from their accrued score in the competition if they are talking or otherwise interrupting play during the session.

Notes:

• I used to have the captain of each team wear a hat, so I knew who I was listening to from each team.

• If someone in the team calls out a response instead of the captain, the team loses a part of its body.

• Obviously no swear words are allowed.

• For the first couple of sessions have a practice round first until everyone remembers how to play.

• As the moderator, a teacher can decide who or what is the ultimate umpire as to whether or not a specific word is allowed. For example maybe a student dictionary might be the ultimate source.

• I always made sure that the job of team captain was rotated through the team for the beginning of a session. Otherwise the kid who was the best speller would always want to be captain.

Conclusion:

I promise you, your students will love this game and probably become obsessed with it. I used to have teams that would turn up to the session with their paper lists of “killer words” that were going to make them winners. The trouble was by the time they went through their list their allocated time was already up. One favourite killer word turned out to be “czar” because once the first two groups had said “c – z” then there was no way of escaping the loss of a body part.