ceciliafelsenstein Technology is a tough competitor in our classrooms. With smartphones, video games, and streaming platforms always within reach, it’s no wonder our students find it hard to focus. So how do we compete with that level of instant gratification?
That’s why I’ve created this list of go-to games for ELA classes—some brand new, and others you might recognize from previous posts. Whether you’re focusing on grammar, vocabulary, writing, or even SEL, these games will help keep your students engaged and learning.
Games for Your ELA classes
🎯Games to Review Grammar & Literary Devices
- Parts of Speech: Do you know the famous “This or That” game? I have desgined two versions of it for students to review parts of speech.
- Literary Devices – This or That (Song Edition): This version uses popular song lyrics to review literary devices. Students love recognizing lines from songs while learning to spot metaphors, similes, and more!
🔤 Vocabulary Games
- Taboo Game: Students describe the vocabulary word without using obvious related terms. They have to get creative—and that’s where the learning happens.
- Pictionary: Students draw the vocabulary word they get and their team has to guess! Super fun and you make sure everybody learns the words!
- Categories: Students complete specific categories using a given letter. It’s a super fun challenge and sparks lots of creative thinking.
- ABC: Students write a learned word for each letter. Turn it into a group challenge and watch the fun!
- 10 Questions: One student thinks of a word, and the rest of the team asks up to 10 yes/no questions to figure it out. A great critical thinking game.
- Back-to-back: Assign a category and students from different teams have to name words belonging to it—perfect for review and a good laugh!.
- Word Guess: You read definitions and students race to guess the word. Great for both accuracy and speed
- Creative Vocabulary Challenges: Ask your students to create reels, poems, jingles, ads, or even memes with assigned vocabulary… They’ w’ll think they are having fun—but they’re actually reviewing and applying new words in creative contexts.
🎉 You can get all 20 of these vocabulary activities bundled here! 👉 Download Now
💛 Games to work on SEL
- Friendship Traffic Light Game: Understanding True Friendship: In this activity, students use a traffic light analogy to reflect on how healthy their friendships are.
- Silent Teamwork Challenge: Practising Non-Verbal Communication: Teams must complete a task using only non-verbal communication. It’s hilarious, challenging, and great for building empathy and collaboration.
- 5 Teamwork Challenges: Fun activities to build trust, communication, and problem-solving: Paper Airplane Challenge, Spaghetti Tower, Rebus Puzzle Race, Emoji Movie Guessing Game, Logo Challenge
👉 Learn more about how I teach relationship skills here
⌛Other Games for Your ELA Classes
- 5 Second Game: This is a super fun timed challenge. Students have 5 seconds to name 3 related items (e.g. “3 types of figurative language”). It’s fast and fun for review.
- Rebus: Rebus puzzles are entertaining for your students to play and try to guess. Then, you can ask them to create some of their own!
Whether you’ve got five minutes or a full lesson to fill, games are one of the best ways to keep students active, thinking, and engaged. Try one of these ideas this week—and let me know how it goes!
