The Name Game Revised

How it's changing after all these years

You guys! All this learning I’ve been doing about the science behind how kids learn to read—and especially how they orthographically map words—must really be solidifying in my brain. I say this because the other day, when I was doing something completely unrelated, it all of a sudden hit me that I need to change the way I do The Name Game.

Now, before I go any further, you need to know that I’ve been doing The Name Game—with very few changes—since my first year of teaching kindergarten. I even wrote about it in Teaching Writing in Kindergarten (Scholastic, 2008), which I started writing in 2004. The Name Game has always proven highly engaging and extremely effective in teaching phonemic awareness and phonics. Students love it year after year and throughout the entire school year.

So why in the world would I change it? The reason is amazing!

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How I’ve Always Done The Name Game

If you click on the link above, you’ll see in The Name Game video that I’ve always 1) furtively chosen a student’s name, 2) written lines on the board to coincide with the number of letters in the name (think Hangman), and 3) encouraged students to guess letters until they figure out whose name it is. After that, we would do several activities with the name, including 1) segmenting and circling each sound in the name, 2) deciding which sounds were behaving or misbehaving and putting a star under the sounds that were behaving, and 3) crossing off any silent letters. As shown in the video, the board might look like this:

If you think about what I’ve been doing all these years, I’ve been counting the number of letters in students’ names—putting lines on the board to indicate how many letters are in the name—rather than counting the number of phonemes. And we’ve always worked from letters to sounds instead of going from sounds to letters.

What’s it matter? What’s the difference? What are the implications?

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Why I’m Changing The Name Game (after all these years)

Like I said, I had a revelation just the other day. It dawned on me that I need to be taking students from phonemes to graphemes (from sounds to letters). In other words, instead of starting with how many letters are in the name and then figuring out what sounds those letters are making, we need to start with how many phonemes are in the name and then figure out which letters/graphemes we’re going to map onto those phonemes.

This is what orthographic mapping is—being well aware of the phonemes in a word and thinking through the graphemes to map onto the phonemes. The research shows that this is how students learn to spell. And it’s clear that we, as teachers, need to teach kids how to approach words in a way that facilitates mapping. I can do this by changing up my Name Game procedures!

The Name Game is also an opportune time to bring in the concept of the heart. Think heart words. If we’re going to put a heart under the “hard part to remember by heart” of irregular words, we can do the same with student names. I used to put a star under the letters that were behaving and, in contrast, do nothing with the letters that were misbehaving (not saying their typical sound); now, instead, I’ll put a heart under any sound in the name that isn’t represented by one of the sound’s graphemes. To say it another way, I’m going to draw students’ attention to the parts of the name that are hard (by putting a heart) whereas the stars that I used to use put emphasis on the easy parts of the name.

Averi’s name would now look like this:

Do you notice what’s different?

• There are four lines for four phonemes versus five lines for five letters.

• Instead of noting—with a star—the letters that are behaving, the irregular part of the name is showcased with a heart, helping students to learn the “hard part to remember by heart” and ultimately helping them map the word.

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How I’m Changing The Name Game (after all these years)

In order to help solidify my thinking and be ready to implement these changes on the first day of school, I wrote out the steps for my new way of doing The Name Game and will share them here. Remember, The Name Game is a great way to choose the special helper of the day, who in my class is called the Busy Bee.

1. Students sit in a circle/oval, if possible, but need to be able to see the board. To start, the Busy Bee from the day before holds the stuffed bee (or the teacher can if that student is absent or if you can’t remember who the last Busy Bee was). The teacher holds a stack of cards, one word per card in the order of the Busy Bee chant.

   Who will be the Busy Bee?

   We will see.

   Will it be you?

   Or will it be me?

   We will see in one, two, three!

2. Say the chant slowly, saying each word at the same time the word is shown (voice-print match). The bee gets passed around the circle clockwise, one student per word (one-to-one correspondence). Students should focus on the word cards and should join in on the chant. They can also call out the punctuation they see at the end of each sentence or question. Doing this daily will help them learn the concept of word and even how to read and spell the words. They will also become more observant about punctuation.

3. The student who is holding the Busy Bee puppet on the last word (three) will be the Busy Bee for the day. The teacher will:

   • (first time through the names/approximately 25 school days) say the student’s name slowly, listening to each sound and then have the students do it with her; talk about what the mouth does for each sound

   • (second time through the names) say the student’s name slowly and count the number of sounds on her fingers; then have the students do it with her

   • (third and subsequent times through the names) have the student say the sounds in their name and count the sounds on their fingers on their own

   * In January/February, change to using last names and repeat the bullets above.

4. The teacher will then:

   • (first time through the names/approximately 25 school days) write the Busy Bee’s name on the board, saying the letter names as she writes them

   • (second and subsequent time through the names) write Hangman lines to represent the number of sounds in the Busy Bee’s name (if there are six sounds, write six lines; the number of lines should match the number of phonemes in the name, not the number of letters in the name)

5. Next, the teacher will ask questions, such as:

   • What is the first sound in Jackson’s name? How should we spell that sound?

   • What is the last sound in his name? What letter(s) spell(s) that sound?

   • (if certain sounds haven’t been taught yet) We haven’t learned this sound yet, but maybe Jackson can tell us what comes next in his name (okay to teach not-yet-taught letters/sounds during this process as well as discuss sounds that are not represented by their typical graphemes).

   • (after the class is familiar with each others’ names and how they’re spelled) What is the hard part of this name to remember by heart? What letters should we use to spell that sound?

   • And other similar questions that get kids listening to sounds and mapping graphemes onto those sounds.

   * Skip the bulleted questions above the first time through the names/approximately 25 school days; ask them the second and subsequent times through the names.

   * Remember to switch to last names in January/February for a whole new set of names to analyze and practice spelling.

6. The teacher will then engage the class in various activities associated with the Busy Bee’s name:

   • (first time through the names/approximately 25 school days) name cheer - Give me a J! (J), give me an a! (a), give me a c! (c), give me a k! (k), give me an s! (s), give me an o! (o), give me an n! (n), what’s that spell? (Jackson!), what’s that spell?? (JACKSON!)

   • (first time through the names/approximately 25 school days) Is capital J a tall letter or a short letter? Is a a tall letter or a short letter? etc., going through the entire name and using hang-down in the question for hang-down letters

   • (second and subsequent times through the names) Decide which sounds are spelled by the typical graphemes (J for /j/, a ck for the /k/ sound) and which parts of the name have a “hard part to remember by heart” (o for the /i/ sound). Put a heart under such letters. If the name has any silent letters, talk about them, squeeze them in where they go, and put a heart under them if needed (if the silent letter is irregular).

   • Other activities for later in the year include clapping syllables in the name, omitting sounds in a name, and substituting sounds in a name.

   * Skip the first two bullets here when you switch to using the last names as students should be quite familiar with letter names and letter heights by this time in the school year.

   * Teachers might want to display student names with hearts under the “hard parts to remember by heart.” This will help students understand the concept when it is applied to irregular high frequency words (also called heart words).

   Click here to get these instructions in a Google doc format and also in a chart form that summarizes the steps, making it much easier to comprehend.

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I hope this all makes sense to you and that you can feel my thrill on realizing how this seemingly small change in something I’ve been doing for years should greatly influence my kindergartners’ ability to think about names and words in a way that will, without a doubt, build their orthographic mapping capabilities.