The Name Game

Supplement your phonemic awareness and phonics instruction using high-interest student names

I’ve been doing the name game for as long as I can remember. I even wrote about it in Teaching Writing in Kindergarten (Scholastic, 2008). I thought I made it up, but I have seen it, in various versions, in other teaching resources as well. It doesn’t surprise me—what do kindergarten students love the most? Their name! What do they love almost as much as their name? Their friends’ names!

The Name Game takes 5-10 minutes. It is similar to playing Hangman (students guess letters), but there is no illustration of a dangling human to deal with and the students always win. Once we have determined the name and declared the Busy Bee for the day, we analyze the letters and sounds in the name. Since we do this every day for the entire school year, you can imagine how slow it starts off and how it then becomes faster paced with more sophisticated conversation. And, we start using last names in February so that we have a whole new set of letters and sounds from which to learn.

Watch the video to get the general gist of the game and see how effective it is in addressing phonemic awareness and phonics. The video shows what it looks like in January. After the video, you can read how it starts off in August and morphs through the months.

The Name Game

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In August and September, students will guess letters. Many students do not know what letters are, don’t know the names of any letters, and might guess numbers and shapes. At first I respond with, “Nope. There is not a 2 in this name.” Soon, I’ll imply that I’m looking for better thinking. “Five is a number, not a letter. We need a letter from the alphabet.” If students have nothing to say, I point to a letter in the alphabet and say, “Do you want to guess an e?” There are usually enough students in the class with letter knowledge to keep the game moving along. I display a list of all the first names, but students are not yet able to refer to it. They cannot discriminate well enough to search for a certain name and don’t realize, anyway, why doing so would help with the letter guess. Once we know the name, we do a name cheer. I say, “Give me an I” and the students raise their fists and call out, “I!” We do all the letters (I-v-o-r-y) and then I say, “What’s that spell?” “Ivory!” “What’s that spell?” I ask again, encouraging them to say it with greater conviction. Last, we study the name for tall letters and short letters. The purpose is to draw attention right away to the fact that letters have different sizes in addition to different shapes. “Is I tall or short?” (tall). “Is this v tall or short?” “What about o?” (short) “Is lowercase r tall or short?” (short) “Is y a tall letter, short letter, or hang-down letter?” (hang-down)

By October, students are able to use the list of names to make better educated guesses. They can count how many letters there are in names and we’ve learned a bit about the process of elimination. I can also transition from modeling how to form letters to having the students tell me how to make the letters. We start segmenting and counting the sounds in a name, as you saw in the video. When I circle the sounds, sometimes I circle letters that are working together (sh, er, ay, etc.) and sometimes I leave letters uncircled because they do not make any sound in the name. We then talk about whether each sound is behaving or misbehaving. Misbehaving letters are sometimes called violators in the research, but the kids like the terms behaving and misbehaving. Letters and letter chunks that are behaving get a star. This discussion changes a lot as the students’ phonics knowledge increases. Throughout all of this, students learn important concepts such as sometimes letters make the right sounds and sometimes they do not, letters can work together to make new sounds, and sometimes letters are silent. This continues on into January or February, when we start using last names.

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The students love this game from day one until the last day of school. It results, daily, in determining the special helper and that is one reason it is important to them. The main reason students stay engaged, however, is that they are using their knowledge of phonics in the real world and, as the discussion becomes more sophisticated each day, they become more and more fascinated with phonemic awareness and phonics.