I Hate Writing

This is a game to reinforce that writing needs detail for the picture in the readers head to understand.

Two players sit back to back with 20 identical pieces of lego. One is the leader and the other is a the listener.

The leader has to make an object using all 20 lego pieces, and must explain with detail where each piece is placed.  The listener must try and place the piece exactly where the leader is describing.  Once all of the pieces are together, the two will compare their objects.

At first this is quite hard to do, but the more details given, the more likely the listener will know where to put the pieces.  This is an example of show not tell, which is where the writer must give details so the reader can visualise what the writing is describing.

Boggle is a good way to build vocabulary, and also to assist in developing spelling knowledge.

There are a number of ways to play this game.

Firstly, you need to find as many words as you can using any of the letters only once.

Secondly, to have a competition to find the ‘longest’ word.

Another is to only use letters that are connected.

A boggle  4×4 generator link below:

http://projects.exeter.ac.uk/brad/boggle/braggle.htm

Good old fashion charades!  This is a good example of  ‘Show not tell’.  You need to be able to give more information, to make yourself clear.  This is often quite hard for children to do.

here is a link to a word generator for the game:

https://www.randomlists.com/charades-words

This can be done as whole class or small groups.

Using a game of Jenga, attach language feature cards to each piece. There are names of language features as well as examples of language features.  The game is played the same as Jenga, except each time a piece is removed the player must identify, or explain and give an example of the language feature written on the piece.

HOW TO PLAY THE GAME:

This is a good start for writing sentences.  The idea is to get the most points by completing the sentence.

This is a two player game. Each player takes turns to write one word at a time.

For example: Player 1 writes “A”, player 2, then writes “boy”, player 1 “went”, player 2 “for” etc.

The person who puts the punctuation at the end of the sentence wins.

1 point is for a full stop

2 points for a question mark

3 points for an exclamation mark.

How many points can you get?

What punctuation did you use?

This game needs you to think about what word you write, because if you add a word that may end a sentence then your opponent will get the point.

This is a page to support teachers in creating activities for writing that are exciting and fun!  They are not typical writing activities!  Please feel free to comment.