Happy Friday! Today marks the beginning of my first Friday Archive post. Every week, I’ll post language arts ideas and resources I used successfully in my classroom and in my own homeschooling.
Boggle in the Classroom
When I taught high school juniors, we played board games after our weekly Friday test. One of the games we loved most was Boggle. Sometimes we played as a class; sometimes we played different games–Boggle but also Scrabble, Upwords, etc.–in groups.
Boggle is better than Scrabble or Upwords in a classroom because it is fast. You can play a round in a few minutes and then assess who wins just as quickly. Moreover, Boggle can be used as an incredible motivator if you award bonus points–for my classroom, on that day’s Friday test–to the student with the most words or to the student who forms the longest word or who finds a word that has been in your vocabulary unit or in one of the works of literature you’ve studied. (I found calculating points this way a lot faster than typical points scoring.) You can use a standard 4×4 Boggle board, but these days Amazon also offers larger boards of 5×5 (Big Boggle) and even 6×6 (Super Big Boggle).
I’m including affiliate links below under “Recommended Resources” if you are interested in buying one of these games. (As an Amazon associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. The commissions I receive from Amazon help me buy resources to develop this site further.)
A Less Expensive Option
But if you are on a budget–and right now, who isn’t?–I have another solution. (Also, this solution is better for “traveling” teachers who don’t have their own classrooms.)
You can create your own Boggle boards. I wouldn’t recommend using artificial intelligence to create your own; I’ve tried it, and the words almost never connect because the letters aren’t actually adjacent. But you can find Boggle board generators on the Internet. As a teacher, one time I printed Boggle boards on an overhead projector transparency for semi-permanent use (although we all know the ink still rubs off sooner than we’d like), and students would use scrap paper for their lists. You could also display these without ink or paper in a PowerPoint or on a SMART Board. These boards can be used with every class, every year.
Most of my students loved Boggle–provided we didn’t have one student who won all of the games, but I found that situation rare, particularly given the competitiveness of my students and especially where bonus points were involved. Do you have seven minutes at the end of class? Did your lesson not last as long as expected? Boggle is a great filler.
Literacy Benefits
By playing Boggle and modeling your own thought processes as you seek to find words yourself, you can guide your students to understand that looking for syllables and specifically roots, prefixes, and suffixes is key to winning Boggles games. You can even make your own Boggle boards to focus on specific roots or affixes.
Free Resource: Boggle/Word Find Board
In fact, I start my vocabulary classes with a Boggle word find that focuses on the root PORT (which means “to carry”). If you’re interested in a copy of this resource, you’ll need to join my Teacher Workroom newsletter. Just enter your e-mail address at the link here. (I promise not to spam you, and you can unsubscribe at any time.) After you confirm your e-mail address, you should receive a downloadable, printable copy of the board. The printable will include a permanent link to the solutions for this particular puzzle. It also includes notes about suffixes you’ll want to highlight and other literacy tidbits–like forming plurals of nouns that end in the letter O and about the word origin of portare.
I’ll be sending more of these boards for other roots and affixes in the future. Make sure you subscribe to the mailing list so that you have first access to these!
Recommended Resources
As promised, if you’d like to buy an actual Boggle board for your home or classroom, I’m including direct affiliate links below. (And again, as an Amazon associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.)
Boggle Vintage Bookshelf Edition
Any Questions?
That’s it for today! If you have any questions, please let me know.
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