Teaching Vocabs with Tic-Tac-Toe Grids!

Tic-Toc-Toe is a quick game to learn or review new vocabulary or language concepts.

Instead of playing with the traditional circle and crosses, replace the circles and crosses with vocabulary or concepts you want the children to learn or review. 

For example, you can replace them with emotions! Here, player 1 is sad and player 2 is happy. 

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Preparation
It's very easy to create a tic-tac-toe grid for your own teaching purposes. There are many free general tic-tac-toe templates that you can find through Google. If you are looking for more personalized grids, you  can easily create your own 3x3 grid using Microsoft word or powerpoint. Alternatively, you can draw on paper or even the whiteboard as a group activity (Teacher vs Students!). 





















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How To Play
1. Distribute the premade tic-tac-toe templates to the class. 

2. Partner up the class. Each player will be assigned one vocabulary word to represent them in the game, for example, 'sad'. 

3. The players take turns to choose a square with the aim to score three in a row. 

4. Before occupying the square by drawing the related vocabulary (eg. sad face for the word 'sad), they must do the following tasks:
•   Spell out the selected vocabulary. (eg. s-a-d.)
•   Make a sentence using the selected vocabulary (eg. I am not sad today.)

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Variations
•   Instead of using vocabulary, you can use it to review grammar concepts. For example, to review the concept of prefixes and suffixes, one player can be responsible for prefixes while another player can be responsible for suffixes. In order to occupy the square, they must say one prefix/suffix, make a sentence as well as spell/draw it on the square. 

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Click here to download a FREE Emotions tic-tac-toe template!

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Top 5 Ways to Use Bananagrams

Bananagrams Games for Kindergarten and Elementary Kids

Bananagrams is an adorable well-loved game by children. Letter tiles are zipped in a banana bag and the simplicity of the games allows for endless game variations. Here are my personal favorite ways of using Bananagrams for kindergarten and early elementary children. 

You can purchase Bananagrams on Amazon. Click here.

1. “Make a cross”
Start with a letter tile in the middle, then ask your kids to build and extend beyond! For young kids who are not familiarized with spelling any word more than 3 letters, I usually put a letter tile in the middle then ask them add one tile on each side to create two three-letter words aka to "make a cross". 

2. Scatter Scatter

Scatter all the letter tiles on the floor – whoever finds the first “A” or “B”…”C”…”D” wins!

3. Square
Or you could make a square out of the tiles and ask your students to write down the list of words they can spell with them.

And…for the last two, these are my most frequently used ones. I came up with these myself as I was really trying to put every penny spent on Bananagrams into good use. (Please note that the products do not represent the Bananagrams company in any way or form. They are simply products that MAY be used alongside the Bananagrams product.)

4. Word Builder Cards
Kids can build 3-5 letter words using these templates. Each card shows 1 picture, there's a hard version and an easy version. For the easy version, the top right corner shows the spelling in small font size so younger kids can find the letters accordingly. The hard version? No words are spelled.

5. Artsy up! 
Love this! Let your kids search for the beginning sounds of the picture and place the letter tiles accordingly. A for Apple, B for Bag and C for car... it's a matching game that gets the kids recognizing alphabets in no time.

Now...go have some fun with these very cute Bananagrams!

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Taboo game - shhhh don't say it

Taboo -  Get out of the 'comfort-vocab' zone
Perfect game to play after teaching new vocabs!
I find it great in forcing students outside their 'comfort' vocabulary - using words they don't normally use. 

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(For those who are not familiar with Taboo, it's a word guessing game. You play in 2+ teams or even just 2 players. Each player in a team takes turn playing the 'describer' role.The describer have their teammates or partners guess the word on his/her card without using the words listed on the card. The team who manages to make the most right guesses win. For instance, if I wanted to describe the word 'apple', some of the words listed on my card might be 'red' or 'fruit'. I must use words other than those to describe the word 'apple' to my team.)

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What I recommend is...

• Make your own cards with 2-3 taboo words.
• Have themed card sets that fit according to the vocabulary you teach. For instance, I have a set of 'utensil' cards including words like 'fork' and spoon that I use for teaching utensil vocabulary. 

I'll upload a freebie version soon so stay in touch:)

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