Scrabble Slam

As you may know, I AM ON VACATION!!!! Yes that is my very, very, very, happy voice.  It has been absolutely wonderful to spend time with family and do (almost) whatever I please!  Today, we went to the beach and out on the boat.  It was pure bliss for a girl like me.  Tonight we are relaxing at home so I decided to write a quick post.

I know it's not a great picture but still a wonderful day!

Anyway, I wanted to include something teacher focused.  One of the things I love about vacation is all of the games that we play.  Yesterday, we played Scrabble Slam.  It was so much fun.  I might be a little biased because I LOVE word games, but it was really interesting.  It is a fun, fast, easy game to play for all ages.  

As I was playing I could not help but think about how perfect the game is for the classroom.  For those of you who don't know the game you start with a 4 letter word like 'GAME'. Each player has a handful of cards with 2 letters on it.  The goal is to get rid of all of your cards by changing the word as many times as possible.  Repeating words is just fine as long as it is not the current word.  So a changing of the word goes like this 'GAME' can be changed to 'TAME' -> 'DAME' -> 'DATE' -> 'MATE' -> 'MAKE' -> 'CAKE' -> 'BAKE' -> 'WAKE' -> 'WAVE'  -> 'SAVE' -> 'GAVE'  -> 'GATE' -> 'MATE' -> 'MATS' -> 'BATS' and so forth.  Sorry I got carried away!

The point is that it makes the players think about word families.  You have to think about how to change the words only one letter at a time.  You can change any letter you want but it has to create a word and normal scrabble rules apply so proper nouns and slang do not work.

I also appreciate that this is a game for all learners.  Those who love words and are familiar with word families can fly through this and make it a race.  Those who struggle with word families can take their time to really think through how to change the words.  It also can help hand eye coordination since the students have to place the new letter on top of the old one.

I can't wait to incorporate this into my classroom as a station or an extra game. Have you ever played Scrabble Slam? Do you use games in your classroom? What other games do you use?

**Disclaimer:  This is my rendition of the game. There might be more to it, but this is how I played.  This is also not an official review or in any way an ad for this game.**