an ETA's bff, part 2

My other secret weapon, imported game is called Scrabble Slam! On an educational level it blows Catchphrase out of the water, but - to be honest - it's not as much fun. That's not to say it's not fun at all though, I don't think a week goes by that I don't play this with one group or another. 

I tweak this game a lot based on the level of the group playing, but the basics always stay the same: you begin with a four-letter word and each student must change by laying 1 - 3 of their letters on top of the letters in the word to create a brand new word. Each card has two letters on it - one on the front and one on the back. This means that if a student is holding 3 cards in their hand, they have a selection of 6 different letters, but (clearly) letters on the same card can not be used at the same time. 

So the original version is basically chaos, the 4 letter word is created and the remaining cards are dealt evenly among the players who then just lay down cards to create new words as quickly as possible without any order or turns or anything. 

However, that clearly does not make for a very beneficial learning environment, so I here are my versions:

for younger students (I've never played with a group younger than 7th grade, but really, the age is just up to your discretion of the students' abilities): each player gets to hold a total of 5 cards in their hand to change the word with, but they are only allowed to change a maximum of 3 letters. Everybody draws from the same middle pile and always has 5 cards in their hand at the beginning of their turn. For those of you keep score at home, you are right, this version has no winner. I guess you could get creative and count how many cards each student total uses, but I've never had any problem motivating students to play without a winner thus far.

For older students (again, in my experience it's been 10th grade+, but it's really up to you): make you 4 letter word, then deal the cards evenly among the students. This is now their "pile." They pick up all new cards from the top of their pile and can only ever have a maximum of 3 cards in their hand. Who ever uses all the cards in their pile first wins. 

What makes this game really amazing: students are encouraged to keep their hands open for all to see, that way if they're stuck on a word I - or another student even - can give hints for a possible new word they see. For example, if the picture above is their hand the student is stuck, I might give the hint "when you first meet somebody, you ask 'what is your...?'" to get them to guess the word "name." It's even more awesome when students give each other hints. I sometimes I might also require them to define or build a sentence using their new word before it can be accepted. 

Things to watch out for: you can't really play this with a big group, I would say 6 students maximum. I mostly play this actually while tutoring, but I also play with my smaller classes. 

It really is just an awesome game for learning a foreign language!