Quick Spell is an ideal activity if you find your class has problems spelling a particular word. If you notice that the same spelling mistake crops up again and again it’s time to play this game!

The idea behind the activity is making the spelling of this word so natural that students don’t even have to think about it.

First write the word up on the board and check with the class about its meaning and spelling.

Then have every student take out a pen and paper. They write their name at the top of the paper and then they put their hands on their heads.

At your command they have 30 seconds exactly to write the word down as many times as they can. And they have to do it as fast as they can, obviously!

When the time is up you get students to swap papers to make sure everything is spelt correctly. Any time the word is spelt wrongly it’s crossed out and doesn’t count (look round the class to check here; if there are lots of spelling mistakes then go over the word again as there’s obviously something wrong).

Then ask everyone who’s written the word 20 times to hold their papers up. No one? Ask those with 19 times. No one? Ask with 18 and so on until you find a winner.

Regularity

Once you’ve played this a couple of times with the class and they know the drill it can become a very useful tool to use to revise spellings. The students will be familiar with the game and it will run smoothly each time.