Quiet games

Word Ladder

Change one letter at a time to turn one word into another: CAT to COT to DOT to DOG. A puzzle that builds spelling and phonics skills.

How to play Word Ladder

Write a start word and an end word with the same number of letters (COLD and WARM).
Students change one letter at a time to make a new real word each step.
They write each step as a rung on the ladder.
The shortest correct ladder wins.
Share solutions on the board.

Younger students: give clues for each rung ("Change one letter to make an animal").

Keep playing

Brain breaks

Each group gets a vegetable name, and the group that is called squats while chanting, then calls the next group to squat.

Review games

Students guess letters to reveal a hidden word before the drawing is complete.

Quiet games

Students supply nouns, verbs and adjectives without seeing the story, then read the silly result aloud.

Review games

The teacher picks a row of students as the "train", and each student answers in turn without a pause, like cars passing one after another.

No prep

Each student says a word that starts with the last letter of the previous word: apple, egg, giraffe.