Scattergories

This classroom game was inspired by the game pictured above, Scattergories.

The board game is played by rolling a letter dice, and having a set amount of time to write an answer for each category on the card, but every answer has to start with whatever letter you rolled. Then you go around the group, and any unique answer that you have you get a point for.

The way I play this is the classroom is a bit different.

First, I primarily use it for phonics, so my explanation of the game is going to come from that. At the end I will also list some additional ideas I have for this game.

Each of my students has a white board in their desk as one of their school supplies for the year. We play this game with these boards. If you don't have access to this, the game could easily be played on paper, with you just checking the papers instead of the boards.

I name a special sound (the way our curriculum refers to unusual sounds such as "sh," "ough," etc.). Let's say for this game I say "sh."

Then each student has to write a word on their board that uses this sound. Then they hold the board to their chest. After some time has passed, and it looks like all my kids are done writing, I have them hold their boards up. Like the original Scattergories, any word that is duplicated in the classroom is eliminated. So, if two students have the word "shoe," they both have to put their boards down. Then I go around and check to make sure that the words are spelled correctly. The original game does not have this rule, but is obviously an important change needed to play this as a class. If a child wrote "shu", they would be eliminated. I do allow suffixes as enough of a difference to stay, where in the board game you wouldn't. For example, "shirt" and "shirts" would both get to stay as long as no one else wrote either of those two words.

Any word that survives both parts of the elimination (unique word, and spelled correctly), and uses the sound correctly is considered a winning word. The writer of that word then receives a class dollar. I usually do a few rounds of this when we have time to play, and it is a real treat for the kids. Later in the year, it gets to the point where kids are frequently asking if we are playing scattergories that day.

Variations of the game:
-I have played it where instead of a sound, I will do a prefix or a suffix, and they have to put it with a word.
-I have played it where I give them a part of speech (like noun, verb, adjective) and they can put any word as long as they can argue that it is that part of speech. This takes a bit longer to decide if they have a "winning" word or not because of words like paper. In "I have a piece of paper," its a noun, but in "I brought a paper bag," its an adjective. As long as the kids can justify their decision, I let it stand.
- With higher levels you could have them write an alternative word to "said" or a synonym for any other too often used word.
- In science, you could have them write an animal that fits within a certain category (like mammal) and then pay for unique ones. I think you could do the same with rocks, but I don't cover that in my year, so I'm not sure.
- In history, you could have them write a name of a person important during the civil war, or revolutionary war, or other unit in history.

There are a lot of possibilities with this game, and it rewards those kids who are able to think outside of the box. I encourage you to try it in your classroom.