Divide students into teams of two or three. The teacher starts the game by giving a letter. The first team has to say the letter and try to spell a word with it. They get one point for each letter in the word, and two extra points if they spell it properly, which pushes them to try to spell longer words. Depending on the age, make it a rule that all words must be more than three, four or five letters. The next team must then say and spell a word that starts with the last letter of the previous word.
For this game you will need a set of alphabet cards for each team. Depending on the level of your students, you can also use diphthongs and consonant cluster cards, such as "sh" and "ck." Divide the kids into several teams of two to six. Spread the cards randomly on the floor and have them sit back a few feet. When you call out a word, the first student must go to the pile, find the first letter and take it back, placing it in front of the team. He tags the second student, who gets the second letter, and so on, until the word is spelled. Be sure to call out words that are long enough so that all can play. If there are only two on a team, they can work together to spell. This game can get a little noisy as they get into it.
Divide the class into two to four teams and the board into the same number of sections. Have the groups choose a team name and write it at the top of each section. Get one student from each team to go up to the board. When you call out a word, they have to be the first to spell it. If you let the other team members help, remember that it can get quite noisy. For younger students, just learning to spell, write the same word in each section, leaving out a few letters. Say the word and they race to fill in the blanks. This game is simple, but a crowd-pleaser.
Make a stencil that can be photocopied with 14 big squares; two on the first line, three on the second, then four and five, respectively. This game can be played individually or in pairs. Demonstrating on the board will make it easier. You will give the students a letter and they will have to make two-, three-, four- and five-letter words that start with it. For more advanced students, you can make the words longer. Give one point if they have the same word as another team and two if only they have it. Scoring like this gets them thinking of uncommon words.