Word-Building Games: Making Words From a Set of Letters

Give a class seven letters and ask for words. Pupils stop waiting for a word to appear on the page and start searching their own memory for it. Most classroom vocabulary work asks pupils to recognise: match the word to the picture, choose the right option, find the word in the grid. A word-building game asks them to produce. This article explains why that matters and how word parts turn short words into long ones. It then shows how to run the game on paper with seven letters and one compulsory letter, and where the format stops being useful.

What does a word-building game teach?

A word-building game teaches pupils to produce words rather than recognise them. Given the letters P, L, A, Y, E, R and S, a pupil has to think of a word, spell it from the letters available and decide whether it is real. Nothing on the page supplies the answer. The game also shows how one base word grows into a family: play, plays, player, players, replay.

It does not teach meaning. A pupil can build parse from those letters without knowing what it means, and the game will accept it. So the format works best as revision of words pupils have met in reading, followed by a short check on meaning.

In short, the game is a production drill with a spelling check built in. That makes it a good partner to recognition activities such as word searches, which we discuss in Do word searches teach vocabulary?

Recognising a word is not the same as producing it

Nation (2013) describes every part of word knowledge as having two sides. The receptive side is recognising the word when you hear or read it. The productive side is being able to say or write it yourself. A pupil can have one without the other.

Laufer (1998) measured the gap in 48 secondary school learners of English in Israel, comparing pupils with six and seven years of instruction to see what one more year adds. Passive vocabulary, the words pupils understood, was well ahead in the second group. Controlled active vocabulary, the words they could produce when prompted, was ahead by less. Free active vocabulary, the words they chose to use in their own writing, was no larger at all. The gap between passive and controlled active knowledge was wider in the more advanced group.

A word-building game sits in the middle row. The letters are a prompt, and the pupil has to supply the word. That is not the same as using the word freely in writing, but it is a step past recognising it. Laufer's study covered one school year in one country, so treat it as a clear illustration rather than a law.

Word families, prefixes and suffixes are the tools

Pupils who build long words in this game do it by adding parts. From play they reach plays, player, players and replay. Bauer and Nation (1993) set out the idea of a word family: a base word together with the inflected and derived forms a learner can recognise once they know the base. They graded English affixes into seven levels using frequency, regularity, productivity and predictability, starting with inflections such as the plural -s.

You do not need the seven levels in class. You need pupils to look for endings first. Teach a short list: -s, -ed, -ing, -er, -ly, and the prefixes un- and re-. When the letters allow it, one known base word becomes four or five scoring words.

Teaching word parts has been tested in schools. Goodwin and Ahn (2013) pooled 30 studies of morphological instruction with school-age children learning in English. They found a moderate overall benefit, with gains in vocabulary, spelling, decoding and phonological awareness, but not in reading comprehension or fluency. Effects were larger for younger pupils. Carlisle (2010) reviewed 16 studies and reached a similar but more cautious view. Instruction in word parts helped most when it deepened pupils' grasp of the structure, spelling and meaning of written words, and she judged the research base still young.

For English learners in particular, Kieffer and Lesaux (2012) tested 952 sixth-grade pupils, including Spanish, Filipino and Vietnamese speakers as well as native English speakers. Pupils who were better at breaking words into parts were better at reading comprehension, and the link held across all four language groups. This was an association, not a teaching experiment, and the pupils were language-minority learners in English-medium schools rather than EFL classes.

None of these studies tested a letter game. They tested lessons that explicitly taught word parts. The safe reading is that word parts are worth teaching, and that a word-building game is a place to practise them, not a substitute for teaching them.

How to run it on paper with seven letters

1. Draw seven circles on the board, six around one in the centre. Write one letter in each. The centre letter is compulsory: every word must use it.
2. Set the rules: words of four letters or more, the centre letter in every word, and a letter may be used more than once. Names and abbreviations do not count.
3. Give pairs six minutes to write as many words as they can.
4. Collect words round the class, one per pair in turn. A word already given is skipped. A word that is challenged must be defended: say what it means or use it in a sentence.
5. Score the words, then ask which words came from the story and where.

Letting a letter be used twice increases the number of words and keeps weaker spellers in the game. If you prefer a harder version, allow each letter once only; then a seven-letter word uses every letter exactly and deserves a bigger bonus.

Scoring that rewards longer words

Scoring is a design choice, not a research finding, but it shapes what pupils practise. If every word scores one point, pupils list short words: pay, say, lay. If points rise with length, they hunt for endings and prefixes, which is where word-family knowledge pays off.

The family bonus is worth adding for English learners. It makes pupils say out loud that plays, player and replay belong together, which is the habit you want them to carry into reading.

How to choose the letters from a text the class has read

The letters decide which words are possible, so choose them from the text on purpose.

1. Pick a word of six or seven letters from the story with no repeated letters. Players, friends, strange, dragons and castle all work. That word becomes the bonus word.
2. Check that the letters include at least two vowels and at least one of S, E, D or R, so that plurals and past tenses are possible.
3. Choose the centre letter. A vowel or a common consonant such as R, S, T or N gives the most words. A rare letter such as J or V gives very few.
4. List every word you can make in five minutes. If you find fewer than fifteen, change the word.
5. Underline the words on your list that appear in the story. Those are the ones to ask about afterwards.

Do not worry if the set allows words the pupils have never seen. A pupil who builds pearl by accident has still practised spelling. Only the words from the story get the meaning check.

Limits of the format

• Meaning is not checked. The game accepts any real word. Add the challenge rule and the story check, or pupils practise spelling alone.
• Short words dominate. Even with length scoring, most words built are four or five letters long, so the game rarely touches the longer words in a story.
• Seven letters cover little. One set can reach only a few of a story's words. Rotate sets across the week rather than expecting one set to revise a chapter.
• Strong spellers win. Pair a confident speller with a less confident one, and take words in turn so that every pair contributes.
• It is not free production. Laufer's (1998) free active vocabulary, the words pupils reach for in their own writing, is not practised here. Follow the game with two written sentences that use words from the board.
• Invented words creep in. Require a meaning or a sentence for any challenged word, and keep a dictionary on the desk for disputes.

For recall of a single word's spelling with feedback, a word-guessing game is the better tool. For seeing how a story's words relate, use a word-path puzzle. For the wider picture on memory, see how to help students memorise English vocabulary.

How iRead handles this

In iRead the word-building game is called Bee Genius. Letters from the story the class is reading are set in a honeycomb, with one letter locked in the centre. Every word built must use the centre letter. Longer words score more, and using every letter earns a bonus. The game is regenerated every 24 hours from the story's vocabulary, with no teacher setup, and each clear feeds the word's progress record.

Key takeaway

Run the game on paper with seven letters from the last story, score length and word families, and finish with a meaning check on the words that came from the text.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

1. Bauer, L., & Nation, P. (1993). Word families. International Journal of Lexicography, 6(4), 253-279. doi.org/10.1093/ijl/6.4.253
2. Laufer, B. (1998). The development of passive and active vocabulary in a second language: Same or different?. Applied Linguistics, 19(2), 255-271. doi.org/10.1093/applin/19.2.255
3. Carlisle, J. F. (2010). Effects of instruction in morphological awareness on literacy achievement: An integrative review. Reading Research Quarterly, 45(4), 464-487. doi.org/10.1598/RRQ.45.4.5
4. Goodwin, A. P., & Ahn, S. (2013). A meta-analysis of morphological interventions in English: Effects on literacy outcomes for school-age children. Scientific Studies of Reading, 17(4), 257-285. doi.org/10.1080/10888438.2012.689791
5. Kieffer, M. J., & Lesaux, N. K. (2012). Direct and indirect roles of morphological awareness in the English reading comprehension of native English, Spanish, Filipino, and Vietnamese speakers. Language Learning, 62(4), 1170-1204. doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9922.2012.00722.x
6. Nation, I. S. P. (2013). Learning Vocabulary in Another Language (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139858656