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Hangman

Materials

• None

A traditional kids game you probably remember from school. It's a great way to review vocabulary or to activate vocabulary the students already know. It also teaches spelling skills and you can use it to point out patterns and common (or uncommon) letter combinations.

The Rules

In case you aren't familiar with the game, here's how it's played: Think of a word and write out blanks that represent letters in the word. Now draw a gallows to one side, as in the illustration to the right which uses "down" as the word. Students have to guess which letters are in the word. If they get it right, you put the word on the appropriate blank--in the example, the students have correctly guessed that "D" and "O" are in the word. If students guess a letter that is not in the word, put the letter under the gallows and start to draw a stick figure hanging. In the example, students have guessed "C" and "G" incorrectly and the stick figure has a head and a body. If the students can guess the word before the stick figure is complete, they win. If you finish the stick figure before they guess, they lose.

Tips and Variations

Obviously you keep the game going by drawing lots of parts of the stick figure--eyes, nose, mouth, ears, hands, feet, glasses, clothes....
You can use vocab from a lesson or unit, or you can pick a category of words like "Parts of the Car" or "Things in the Classroom" or for advanced students, "Personal Qualities"
To teach spelling you can chose categories like "Words that End in -tion" or "Words that have double vowels"
Make sure to encourage students to guess letters, otherwise they end up calling out random words
Draw attention to useful spelling tips like common suffixes and root words and what they mean: "-tion", '-er/-or", "pre-" "un-"
You can also draw attention to letter combinations that might be common in their native language but are rare in English, like "Vst-" or in Russian or words that end in "q".

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