Boggle Word Game

Boggle is an easy game to play. All you need is a blackboard and some chalk to play. On the blackboard draw a grid 4 x 3, pick 12 letters from the alphabet and then make as many words as you can from the letters.

E	B	H	O
R	G	I	L
T	D	A	S

I, a, so, go, to, sad, tea, dog,  gold, date, horse, board, ...

Personally I always pick 3 or 4 vowels and the most common constants ( b, d, r, s, t, etc.  not j, x, z ). For the words, I don’t allow names and no plurals ( dog but not dogs ). My students can only use each letter once when making a word.

The aim can be to get as many words as possible or get as many points as possible. A one letter word is worth 1 point, two letter word 2 points and so on.

1 point	2 points	3 points	4 points	5 points
I, a	So, go, to	Sad, tea,	Gold, date	Horse, board

I play this game first on the blackboard, inviting students to tell me the words they can create. This way the whole class sees how it works. Afterwards I put the students into pairs or small groups, pick a new set of letters, give them a time limit, usually 5 minutes and away they go.

Walk around, check their spelling, at the end ask them to tell you their words. I’m sure they will have invented some. For low levels, let them use their English book or their dictionaries.

Its a great game when you have ten minutes at the start of class when you want to get them thinking in English or a fun way to end the class.