When you are teaching letter substitution, you are basically reinforcing the child's ability to identify letters in the alphabet. Teaching letter substitution will help your students become better readers and speakers because it involves helping your students remember more words and understand more words. The more they are exposed to activities that give much emphasis to letters, they may begin to love words and you just might be mentoring a future writer in your class.
Split the class into two groups. You can make this a contest between the two groups or just have a good game for everyone. In this game, the children on each team must line up. You will give the leader of the line a word. He must say the word out loud and then the next person in the line must change at least one letter in the word, as it makes its way down the line. For example, if one student has the word "fun," the student beside him can say '"gun" or "fur."
Cut out letters of the alphabet and tape them on the board so that everyone can see all the letters available. Think of a word and draw enough blanks on the board for the word. Fill in the blanks with the cutout letters. Challenge your students to change one letter in your given word and define it as well.
Letter substitution activities are not complete without word puzzles. You can create your own word-finder puzzles and crossword puzzles and give them to your students as homework. Besides boosting their letter substitution skills, these activities will enrich your students' vocabulary. If your students are ready, you can also start changing letter substitution for word substitution. With word substitution, you give your students a sentence that is missing nouns or adjectives and ask them to fill in the blanks to complete a new thought.