As we get toward the end of the school year many of us will be looking for some fun activities for our students to do to review key terms and concepts of the last year or semester. I shared a handful of ideas for doing that in this week’s Practical Ed Tech newsletter. Another idea is to create some simple online word games for your students to play. This might sound difficult, but it’s not. Thanks to Flippity and EduCandy everyone can create their own online word games. 

Flippity’s Snowman word game is a game in which students have to correctly guess the letters of a word in order to prevent their snowmen from melting. The template lets you make your own variation on the game with words and hints of your choosing. Your game can be shared with students via its assigned URL. Students don’t need accounts in order to play the games that you create. Here’s an overview of how to create your own online word games by using Flippity’s Snowman template. 

Educandy is a neat service for creating simple vocabulary games and multiple choice trivia games. A convenient aspect of the service is that once you’ve created a list of vocabulary words it will automatically be applied to multiple game formats for you. In other words, write one word list and you’ll get a few games that your students can play. Your students can play the games without needing to create an account on the Educandy site. In the following video I provide an overview of how you can create games on Educandy and how your students can access your games.

Flippity’s Spelling Words is a free Google Sheets template that you can use to create individualized spelling games for your students. To do this you simply have to make a list of words that you want each of your students to practice. You’ll then put those lists under your students’ names in a Google Sheets template that is provided by Flippity. The following tutorial video walks you through the process of creating individualized spelling games in with Flippity’s Spelling Words template.