Materials:

52 notes with letters (2 for each letter of the alphabet), paper and pencil for each group.

Instructions:

The teacher places notes with letters in a marked area. The notes are face-down so they cannot be read without turning them over. The students are divided into teams of three to six and take turns running into the marked area and taking a letter for the team. The letter on the note is written down on a piece of paper. Once the group has got 20 letters they can start the following tasks with their letters:

• Make the longest possible word
• Make as many words as possible or a sentence
• Find 3 words from the same word class
• Find words that rime
• Etc.

The activity can be done as a competition where they try to be the quickest or as a race against time.The activity can also be done without competition where the groups work individually with the above tasks. The activity can be done in native languages and foreign languages.

Variations:

The marked areas with letters can also be used for dictation where the groups have to find the dictated word from a task sheet. The task can be developed by the students having to say sentences with the words and taking turns to write them on the paper / blackboard.

In maths the notes could contain different numbers and calculation methods. The group then combine these numbers and calculations methods to make calculations that the other groups  have to do.