Speaking and Listening, Writing
Bands B, C, D

What is it?

Alphaladder is a collaborative activity devised by Dr Helen McGrath and presented in her book, Dirty Tricks, published by Longman . It is a game in which students work together to guess a mystery word.

What is its purpose?

Alphaladder teaches students about the structure and function of words. It is a useful, fun adjunct to the language component of an English program.

How do I do it?

Choose a mystery word for the students to guess. The word could be chosen to tie in with an issue the class has been discussing, or to reinforce an aspect of language that is a current teaching point.

Divide the students into teams of five with assigned roles of questioner, runner, recorder, social skills scribe and leader.

Each team now prepares 20 questions which must only be about the structure of the word, not its meaning. Questions could be about the number of syllables, or the part of speech, the presence of blends, double letters, plurals and so on. In the first round, the students have ten minutes to work out their questions, then two minutes as they refine their skills in working out good questions. The questions can only be those that can be answered with a yes or no.

One team is the performing team, which calls out their questions. They have six minutes to call out questions and work out the answer, but two 90-second time-out sessions are also allowed for students to confer and rethink their strategy. They can call out the answer as soon as they think they’ve got it.

The remaining teams are the shadowing teams, who try to guess the mystery word before the performing team. They do this silently, then write down the word and run it out to the teacher. It must be written down with the number of the last question asked. Meanwhile the game continues as the guess may be incorrect.

Scoring is simple. The performing team scores two points for every question they don’t have to use and the shadowing team gets a bonus if they guess the correct answer before the performers.

How can I adapt it?

Rule changes can be negotiated with students as their use of the game evolves and their knowledge of grammatical terms increases.

How can it be used to evaluate students’ language learning?

Alphaladder gives a snapshot of students’ ability to analyse and describe word function and structure. It also provides evidence of their skills in collaborative discussion.

Where can I find out more?

Sally Gill contributed this idea to the website. In Beaut Ideas you can see her description of the game and photos of her grade 6 students playing it.

Helen McGrath outlines the game, along with others to help students develop social skills, in her book Dirty Tricks: Classroom Games for Teaching Social Skills, published by Longman.