Spelling: Infinitely adjustable cards game 1

Adapt this game to use with sentences. Write a word on each piece of small paper. You could have the students write the words but to save time, I do this preparation. And students often misspell words. Have at least two sets of the sentence in the set. The more times each word appears in a set, the easier it is for them to find the word they're looking for. This is the version of this game that I started using. I later realized it can be adapted in various ways.

We moved the desks to the walls, and had teams of two students. One writer, one finder. I told all the students a sentence without letting them see it. (If the sentences are easy for them, they don't need any preparation. If you want to introduce new vocabulary or new sentence structures, do that first, then play the game.) The finders on each team all look in the scattered cards on the floor for the first word in the sentence. When they find it, they have to put it back down on the floor, face down. Then they run to the writer and tell the writer the word who then writes it down. The finder cannot bring the card to the writer and show it. So the finder must remember how to spell the word. Sometimes they have to go back and find the word again.

You could have both students do the looking and the writing. When either on a team finds a word, they run to the desk to write it down. This could be more fun for the writer. If the finder is slow the writer might get bored. Or if there aren't enough cards all the writers might get bored because it takes so long to find any one word!

When any one team finishes a sentence, they yell out "finish" and I tell them the next sentence. Each team will go at different speeds. One team will finish first. They're the winners. It's not always possible to have teams of equal ability.