Bananagrams is a simple game as a teen or adult, BUT for the younger kids that are still learning to read or spell, it might seem like a challenge (even if a good one!) That doesn’t mean that we should exclude younger kids from playing bananagrams with the family or discount it in early childhood learning settings.
In fact it still has substantial value in teaching young children to sound out words, use inventive spelling, and become confident readers and spellers.
Banagrams quick facts
Game Title 🎲 Bananagrams
Average Time to Play ⏳ 10-30 minutes
Subjects or Learning Objectives 📚 digraphs and blends, inventive spelling, bossy or silent e rules, prefixes and suffixes, growth mindset, executive functioning
Lesson Plans:
1. Allow inventive spelling: this is the practice of sound-based spelling that many young children use that results in incorrect and unusual spellings for words as they sound them out.
2. Emphasize the helpfulness of “bossy e” words when playing. It’s where you have a silent ‘e’ at the end of a word that completely alters how that word is pronounced by “making” the vowel say it’s name. Examples include cut vs cute, kit vs kite, mat vs mate, so on and so forth. This helps them visualize the opportunities in their word board vs the limitations.
3. Use the game to discuss plural words. Same concept like the bossy e, but a little more well known is to simply add an -es or -s to a word to expand the board.
4. Introduce pre-fixes like un-, over-, mis-, among others. And suffixes like -est, -ly, and -ful.
5. Finally, don’t let the game be truly over until you go through and together work out their board. This means that together you discuss correct spelling because many aren’t so far off that it completely breaks their words up (Like we had one child that did “bowvine” instead of “bovine”. So simply talk about correct spelling and then keep looking for ways to use up their tiles so that they don’t feel like it’s an impossible feat, rather just times time and practice to do better.
Supplemental Resources:
- More on the Bossy E and practice words for students
- Helpful printouts to reinforce prefixes and suffixes with early readers
How we rate the game
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Where to buy: ♦️ Amazon
Bananagrams to help early readers apply and understand phonics
Students will be able to write words using spelling patterns and rules for sounds
Even goof readers sometimes have a hard time spelling. Using games that help children both visualize and manipulate words will help bridge the gap between the two by working through the rules of spelling and then looking to see if the word looks correct.
Students will be able use word analysis strategies to spell unfamiliar words
Misspelling an unfamiliar word should never be the cause to just throw this game out the window. Make it a rule that inventive spelling is applicable if they can show the analysis of how they achieved spelling the word the way they did. This can reinforce good phonics and develop a greater sense of understanding.
Students will be able to use chunks, blends, dipthongs and digraphs correctly or with supplemental help
Because there are a lot of letters than come up in Bananagrams that can readily be blended, teach students to strategy to put blends and dipthongs together so they are a “waiting pair” as they construct their words into a word board.
Students will be able to learn and implement the “bossy e” rule of phonics
The bossy e is the e at the end of a word that makes the vowel in the middle of the word turn from a short vowel sound to a long vowel sound. Students will be able to show proficiency in applying the rule by shifting their letter boards by simply adding the e to words like rat, cut, mat, dud to rate, cute, mate, and dude.
Students will be able to understand and apply prefixes and suffixes to a base word
Similar to learning and applying the bossy e, students can show an understanding of how not only to apply a prefix and suffix to change the word itself, but also its meaning to become a superlative, opposite or other kind of word with the same base or root word.
How to Play Bananagrams : modified Game play for young kids
In the actual rulebook of Bananagrams they suggest playing a version they label “Banana Smoothie” where there’s no need to rush. This takes the stress off the younger players and/or those that struggle with the fast pace of someone always calling “peel” or the distraction of someone calling “dump”! It’s a simple idea in that everyone gets the same number of tiles and all the tiles are split evenly between players so no one is grabbing anything extra, rather using only the tiles they have.
Again, we allow inventive spelling at our table as long as they can justify how they came to that spelling conclusion. We do sit with them and work to “fix” spellings afterwards but not because they did it wrong but so they can visualize correct spellings of words.
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