Build Community With Scrabble!

Scrabble is one of my favorite games. Like most people around the world (including Alec Baldwin), I was addicted to Words With Friends. Not only could I play Scrabble but I could play long drawn out games with all of my friends. Perfect!

Unfortunately, I'm not very good. Honestly, I'm pretty terrible, but I keep playing. I'm 99.9% sure that my friends kept playing me so they could rack up their wins. Actually, I'm positive of this... because I've been informed of this.

I've taken several beatings. 

I had a pretty powerful streak of losing going on there for awhile. My friend's dad and I played for MONTHS. Then, sweet victory came my way and I won.  On the day I finally beat him.... I didn't plan on challenging him to another game,  but I accepted and ended up losing...again. Obviously, I haven't played in sometime. I suppose the sting of all of the losing finally caught up with me. OR! I just got hooked on Draw Something! and I couldn't handle that many games going on with friends. 

We're very familiar with the first few days of school being quite stressful and busy busy busy.  This year, I wanted to tie in Scrabble with my community building activities. It's been decided (and written in my plans) that the class will play a collective game of Scrabble. Why not!?

Here's how:

I'll start the game by giving an introduction to the game of Scrabble and how it works. I have a scrabble board and actual tiles to demonstrate. 

Next, I'll issue the challenge: As a class, we must fit our names together on the scrabble "board". The board will actually be the wall and the "tiles" are made of paper. Thanks to Christniana and her awesome Scrabble Freebie on TpT! 

I'll start with my name, first. Then, students can grab tiles (that have been cut and laminated for future use!) and spell out their first, last, middle, or nickname. I'm hoping students use nicknames to add into the fun. 

Not only will we be practicing our names, but we can learn more about each other as each student adds their name to our classroom board! I plan to encourage students to help one another by building from the growing names on the board. We may have to fudge on the rules of actual Scrabble just a tad to make it work. 

What community building activities do you use to start off the year?