This is a fun game to play on Fridays--especially in the fall when football is in the air. I came up with the game and have refined it over the last three years with the help of my students as we have played. We've developed a fun way to get the whole class involved in the study of word parts.
The game plays like football--each team gets four downs to complete passes and score touchdowns. Everyone on the team is playing--you can see their minds working to remember words that match the word part. I get the whole class involved by requiring they record the word parts and sample words for a grade.
In every game the students are learning prefixes, roots, and suffixes and seeing the connection between the meanings of the word parts and the words.
I found it works great with students who speak a foreign language which includes some of the same Greek and Latin roots--they see the connections between the meanings of some of the words in their own language and English words that have the same root.
My students beg to play this game all year long.
I love this idea--I'm going to try it in my classroom tomorrow!
November 1, 2009
There is supose to be more word lists coming, so my thoroughness grade would go up when those are posted!
September 21, 2006
The new lists were posted in October! Search for Word Part Football and they'll show up. There are five new lists of 18 words each for $1.
March 8, 2007
Help
Over the last 13 years, I have taught 7th grade through junior college, so the lesson plans that I share here could come from any of those grade levels. I am currently teaching 10th grade reading and world literature and 11th grade reading and American literature. I've been teaching reading for seven years, so most of my lessons were designed with my reluctant readers in mind. Recently I taught an honors level 9th grade class along with my remedial classes; I was surprised by how much my honors students learned when I used some of the same lessons (vocabulary, especially) that I was using with my remedial students. I think all of our students benefit if we slow down and emphasize quality over quantity.
