In simple words, a club is a group of individuals with shared interest or goals. Clubs arrange different activities related to their common interest to improve their skills and strengthen their understanding.

People join different clubs associated with different types of interests for personal development, building networks and team-spirits etc. And a spelling club aims to utilize all these characteristics to improve the spelling skill of the students.

Building a spelling club free in school (or outside school if required) is a great idea to enhance students’ spelling skill through club activities. You can develop their English vocabulary and usage, prepare them for competitions and build their interest in learning spelling.

But running a successful spelling club needs a lot more than ideas and concepts which we will discuss in this article. So, let’s get started!

 

Spelling club ideas: How to set up a Spelling Club?

Before starting a spelling club, you need to make a proper planning to ensure that the club will run for a long time and the members who join will actually benefit from it. You need to take care of a few things first:

Set a goal

Setting a proper aim or goal for your club will help you to understand what you want to achieve from it. Do you want to improve the spelling skill of your students or prepare them for a competition? Or is your main concern to complete the school syllabus successfully?

Being clear about the aim will help you set what activities your students will perform in your club.

If your aim is to develop the interest of your students in spelling, then the spelling activities should be interactive and interesting to your students. Making sure the students are enjoying the activities will be one of the major priorities.

But, if you want to prepare your students for a spelling bee competition, then there will be stricter rules and activities that will focus on learning more words in less time. You will have deadlines to maintain. Enjoyment will still be a concern, but vocabulary acquisition would be the main.

Focusing on school curriculum fall somewhere between the two categories mentioned above. You need to find spelling activities different from the ones applied in everyday lessons. Your club would be considered an additional lesson outside school.

 

Planning Participations

Participation is the biggest issue in setting up a club, so you need to plan it beforehand. Is the spelling club going to be for a certain grade, a couple of grades or for the whole school? If the members are from different grades, then you need to find spelling activities and spelling words lists suitable for each grade.

Grade-appropriate spelling words lists might be hard to find and building your own would be time consuming too. In that case, you can always seek help from SpellQuiz. SpellQuiz Printable Words Lists are divided into grades and have multiple lists for each grade. There are also separate word lists for spelling bee competitions.

You also need to plan if there would be grade-specific sessions, or all the members will be present in each session. If members from different grades are joining together, then activities in those sessions should be enjoyable for all of them.

Useful Tip

If your club has students from different grades, ask the older students to help the younger ones in learning spelling. You can make groups consisting of members from different level and give them a task to complete within a given time. This will develop the team-spirit and strengthen the bonds among the students.

In spelling clubs, you can increase your list of impressive vocabulary for everyday use. Check out our blog on this now!

 

Making the schedule

You should schedule your sessions in a way that it is easy to maintain for both you and the students. Flexible schedules are a great attraction to the members. Each session should not be very short or long. You should make time for at least 2 to 3 activities but not more than that. Make sure to have some time to recall what they learnt earlier.

Weekly sessions would be the best for such clubs, but you can make them more frequent according to the students’ requirements.

Finance

Running a club requires a lot of arrangements and that would definitely need a budget. Is the school going to sponsor the club? How are you going to manage the financial sector if the club is outside the school? Do the members need to pay a fee to join the club?

If a member can join for free, then you can expect a lot of enthusiasm and participation. You should totally go for it if the club is run by the school. But running a club outside school would be expensive. You can arrange a virtual spelling club to reduce expense. In that case, you need to find interesting virtual spelling activities for the students.

 

Plan the activities

The spelling activities you perform in the club will determine how efficient your club is to improve spelling skills. And that would decide how long your club will exist.

The Spelling club activities should be interactive and more interesting than traditional learning. Try to avoid homework as much as you can, rather encourage them to practice the lessons at home in their free time. Below are some ideas for spelling club activities:

Study Sessions

The best way to remember the spelling is to see them regularly. And reading ensures that we see the words continuously in front of our eyes. Arrange reading activities occasionally. You can use books or other printing materials but make sure they contain the target spelling words. Encourage the students to read them loudly. This task will improve their reading ability along with their spelling skill.

 

Spelling Scramble

Spelling scramble is perfect game for students of every level. There are 3 levels of this game:

• Beginner Level:
  Scramble the letters of a word. Say the word loudly and ask the player to rearrange them to make the word.
• Mid-Level:
  Scramble the letters of a word and add a few more letters. Say the word loudly and the player to find the correct letters to build the word.
• Advanced Level:
  Ask the player to build the word after scrambling the whole English alphabets.

For spelling clubs, mid-level and advanced level should be played so that students from different level can enjoy it.

 

Hangman

Hangman is a spelling game that even the adults will enjoy. In case you don’t know how to play it, check the instruction below:

• Select a spelling word.
• Mark spaces for each letter on the board and write down the alphabets beside it.
• Ask the students to guess the letters on the spaces.
• For each incorrect guess, draw a part of a stick figure.
• If the player fails to guess the word before drawing is complete, they will lose the round.
• For beginner level students, write one or two letters beforehand. For advanced level students, you may choose lengthy words.

 

Spelling Bingo

For this activity, you will need a blank bingo grid.

• Give the students a spelling words list.
• Give them a blank bingo grid and tell them to fill the grids with words from the list.
• Now randomly say a word from the list and ask the students from spell it correctly. The one who spells correctly at first will put a cross on that letter in their bingo.
• The number of boxes in a row they need to mark would be determined by the size of the bingo and your instructions.
• You can start with 5 x 5 grid and letter increase the number if needed.

Vocabulary wall ideas are a great addition for spelling clubs. Learn more about it now!

 

Word Search

Word Search is a great way to teach spelling. You can find plenty of templates on the internet or make your own.

• Give the students a grid of letters.
• Give them a list of words that they need to find from the grids.
• The words can be placed vertically, horizontally, or diagonally from left to right or right to left.
• For younger students, place the words vertically and horizontally only, and that from left to right. Other directions should be used for older students or in group activities.

 

Competitions

Arranging competitions should be on your activity list even if you are not preparing your students for competitions. You can arrange these competitions grade-wise if you want, or, you can make it a group competition. Friendly rivalry will motivate students to put more effort in learning and winning the competitions.

Spelling bee competition will help you monitor the improvement of the spelling skill of your students. If you are preparing your students for a competition, these in-house competitions will give them an idea about the actual competition.

In case arranging a spelling bee competition physically becomes a hassle, you can use the virtual ones! SpellQuiz Spelling Bee Online is a virtual spelling bee competition held among students around the world. Your students can participate in the competition, compete against each other, and show their skill on a global platform.

Learn how to improve vocabulary of students now!

 

Online activities

As the competition mentioned above, online spelling activities can be a useful addition to your spelling club. It will also reduce your pressure to arrange new spelling club activities for every session.

Set up a few computers in your spelling club (or you can arrange that particular session in the computer room of the school). Select some online spelling games or other activities suitable for your students and let them enjoy! You would be surprised to see how enthusiastic the students are when it comes to play online games, even if it is spelling games.

You can hold a competition and announce a reward for the winner.

Now that you have a good idea about how to set up a spelling club, there is one thing left for you- print some attractive posters and hang them on the noticeboard. Let the students know about your spelling club and start!

Best of luck!