Use a sheet of poster board to create a racetrack with 125 to 250 positions between the starting and finishing lines. The spaces should be in four or five different colors. Create a set of cards for each color containing vocabulary words that illustrate specific spelling rules, such as "I before E." Divide them into three or more degrees of difficulty with corresponding point values. Players choose easy, moderate or difficult words and, if successful in spelling them, can move their game piece forward by that number of spaces. The winner or winning team gets a small reward.
Lay out the 26 letters of the alphabet in a random pattern on the floor. If your classroom is large enough, put permanent letters in an open area. Otherwise, paint them in reverse on the underside of a clear shower curtain so they're visible from above. Spread the shower curtain on the floor to play the game. Have each child in turn stand on the shower curtain and assign a spelling word. The player "hopscotches" from letter to letter to spell the word. Have the other kids call out the letters as the player jumps. Take a vote whether the player is right.
As you work through your spelling rules during the school year, challenge each child to bring in one word at the end of the week that illustrates the rule you're currently studying. Have them stand up one at a time and spell out their word, explaining what it means. After the presentation, each kid comes up to the front and uses a glue stick to paste their own word into a scrapbook, which becomes the class's own private dictionary and vocabulary resource. Make sure each word has the contributing child's name on it. Include these words in your quizzes.
For each rule you study, have the kids design posters to illustrate the principle involved and provide examples. Divide the class into a number of small groups and provide them with sheets from a flip chart, or similarly low-cost material. Provide a range of media, including markers, crayons and pencil crayons. Scavenge used magazines, sale fliers and catalogs to provide images that can be cut and pasted onto the sheets for illustrations. Hang the posters around the classroom until it's time to move on to the next rule, but save each set for review purposes.