Word Games Equal Student Success

Having Fun with Words

Do you want your child to have a successful learning experience in school? Of course you do! Reading research tells us that children need to have a robust vocabulary in order to be successful in all content subjects. By developing a strong vocabulary for listening, speaking, reading, and writing, children will have a higher achievement rate on their standardized testing, reading comprehension, and academic progress. A fun way to increase vocabulary is through word games. Try some of these suggestions to excite your child about learning vocabulary.



Charades

Use vocabulary words, history or science terms, geometric shape words, famous names, places or things. Take turns “acting out” and guessing the words. This is a great game to use dramatic expression and to build vocabulary knowledge. The whole family can enjoy this game, as one member uses body movement and hand gestures, without talking, to describe the mystery word.



Password

This game is played by giving one word clues to guide the partner to guess the mystery word. This is a great way to practice synonyms and antonyms and to assess your child’s understanding of the word’s meaning.

This game can be done with two sets of partners. Partners A select the mystery word and takes turn giving one word clues to partner B. The first B partner, who guesses the word correctly, earns the point. Then Partners B selects the mystery word to give A’s a chance to guess. The team with the most points after 10 words, wins the game.



Scattergories

This is a fast thinking categories’ game. Players make a list of words that begin with a specific letter to fit into an assigned category. For example:

Category: Animals

Letter: b

Word List must consist of as many animal names that begin with b.

Letter: r

Word list must consist of as many animal names that begin with r.

Word lists are compared and points are earned for the “extra” words that no one else thought of.



I am sure that your family can think of many other word games to play, these are only a few examples of some of the ways that your child can have fun with words.