Unscramble the Words

The jumbled word puzzle helps your child learn spelling. The child has to listen to the audio and and rearrange the letters to form the word. This activity would help the child to understand the sounds of the letters and also to make sense of the silent letter(s) in a word.

How is the activity organised?

There are five levels in this activity. The arrangement of levels is given below:Level one has words having only three letters and level two has words with four letters. Five- letter words are in level three and level four has six-letter words. Level five has words with seven letters.

Level one

Three letter words

Level two

Four letter words

Level three

Five letter words

Level four

Six letter words

Level five

Seven letters and above

This activity has five levels. The challenge is to unscramble the words. A struggling speller requires more practice. Prepare jumbled word exercises using common words and words used in textbooks.

Tips for parents:

  1. We strongly recommend buying a whiteboard and using marker pens of different colours.
  2. Does your child find it difficult to spell words? Does she/he make many spelling mistakes? Does your child lose marks because of wrong spelling?

    Some children struggle to spell words. Your child may have difficulty in spelling words used in the text books. Teach the child spelling of the words and then to strengthen her/his learning, jumble the letters and write on the board. Pronounce the word and ask your child to write the word. Observe your child and note the difficulty your child is experiencing. Find out where the child is going wrong. Take remedial measures.

  3. Find out whether your child has issues with hearing sounds

    This activity is useful to find out whether your child can hear the sounds of letters. Observe your child while she/he does this activity. Can your child hear each letter of the word clearly? The difficulty in processing sound may be behind your child’s inability to spell words. To know more, go to Home Page and refer to Auditory Processing Disorder.

  4. How to prepare jumbled worksheets for learning spelling in text books?

    Writing the words several times to learn spelling is not a good method for a child struggling with spelling. You can teach spelling to your child in many ways.

    One effective method to teach spelling is to use jumbled words. How to make jumbled spelling activities? In a note book, make 9 boxes on a page. Then take another page and make 9 similar boxes. Give numbers 1 to 9 to each box. On one page write the jumbled words. On the other page, write

    the words that are jumbled. Note both the jumbled word and the word would have the same number. This is to easily identify the jumbled word.

    Jumbled words Page one – to be used by the child

    1

    kdemraer

    2

    tropprey

    3

    gtersire

    4

    inurfhs

    5

    rhttu

    6

    llizya

    7

    kttaca

    8

    nrabhc

    9

    lppsyu

    Jumbled words unscrambled Page one – for the reference of the parent

    1

    remarked

    2

    property

    3

    register

    4

    furnish

    5

    truth

    6

    lazily

    7

    attack

    8

    branch

    9

    supply


    How to use the lists? Let us assume you want to teach the spelling of ‘remarked’ to your child. Keep the list of words with you and give the list of jumbled versions of the words to your child. Read out the word remarked (number 1) from your list and direct your child to refer to number 1 and ask her/him to form the word using all the letters in number 1.

    The child has to rearrange the letters, kdemraer to make remarked. A child who struggles with spelling may not be able to get the answer right.

    If your child is not able to spell ‘remarked’ correctly in this exercise, ask her/him to say the word, remarked, slowly several times stretching the sound of the letters in the word. You can also read the word aloud slowly. Ask, “Which is the first sound you hear?” It is also useful to ask, “Which is the last sound you hear?” Go on asking questions on sounds in this word, remarked. Another question can be “Which sound do you hear after m?”

    Some students struggle with spelling because they are unable to match the sounds in the word with the corresponding letters. Regular practice is necessary.

    You have to be extremely patient. Patience will come if you understand the difficulty your child is facing while writing or reading. The problem is we don’t really understand our children.

  5. Explore other ways to teach your child to spell better. Go to the homepage and refer under Dysgraphia. Useful tips for improving spelling are given in these paragraphs- sky writing, vertical surface writing, kinaesthetic –tactile learning, and writing activities.
  1. The internet has good material for teaching spelling.
  2. Make your own worksheets to help your child to learn spelling. You can make “unscramble the word” exercises. Use the words used in the text book of your child.
  3. You can also make your own jumbled word search games. It is not difficult to make word search games. See the example below.

    First select the words and jumble them. Let spring, never, train, winter, please be the words. Make a grid of suitable size. Here we are making a grid of 6x7.

    Making a word search grid with jumbled words.

    First step

    Select the words and jumble them.

    spring is jumbled as gnrsip, never as enrve, train as rtnia, winter as nwriet and please as eselpa. These jumbled words are inserted in the grid. See below.

    r

    t

    n

    i

    a

    g

    w

    s

    e

    n

    r

    v

    e

    r

    i

    l

    s

    e

    p

    i

    t

    e

    p

    Find out these words which are jumbled

    spring

    never

    train

    winter

    please

    Making a word search grid with jumbled words.

    Second step

    After inserting the jumbled letters, the next step is to fill in the blanks with letters.

    t

    r

    t

    n

    i

    a

    r

    t

    g

    w

    a

    s

    e

    e

    n

    r

    v

    e

    d

    o

    r

    i

    a

    l

    s

    n

    s

    e

    l

    p

    i

    e

    i

    t

    k

    e

    a

    v

    p

    i

    g

    s

    Now the puzzle is ready.

    Find out these words which are jumbled

    spring

    never

    train

    winter

    please