Students keep a journal of what they learn each day.

Find a word likely to be unfamiliar to everyone. Tell it to the students and get them to write down what they think it might mean. At the end of the day, or the end of the lesson, read out a list of definitions (include the real one in there somewhere) and have the students vote on which they think is the most likely.

Play team-based hangman with a headline taken from a recent newspaper article. The losing team has to read and explain the contents of the news article to the other team(s)

Create acrostic poems of your own names.

With the class following, read through a book or reader. After explaining the deal, make some occassional deliberate mistakes and see who can be first to spot each error.

Write a list of spelling words on the board. Go over the list of words, then all the students put down their heads and cover their eyes. Erase one of the words and write it again, only this time have a spelling mistake in it. Tell the detectives (students) to go to work, and see who can spot the spelling mistake the fastest.

Assign each letter a different number value, 1 to 26. Write down the list of spelling words in number form, then have the students decrypt them. Award a small prize to the first student to complete the list, but make sure there is incentive for all students to finish the activity.

Get one student to act out an animal that begins with a particular sound. The other students have to guess by asking questions like "Is it 'ch' for 'chicken'?"