LiteracyPlanet today announced the return of its biggest and most thrilling free online word-building challenge for kids that promises to be the talk of the classroom – Word Mania!
Pitching school against school, the competition provides a platform for children to showcase their creativity and initiative while building literacy skills.
Open to school children in Years 1 to 9 from all over the world, LiteracyPlanet has announced an increase in the prizes by an extra £20,000 this year.
This means that British students now have the chance to win a share of the major prize pool for their school valued at up to £100,000.
In the competition, participants have three minutes to create as many words as they can from a board of 15 randomly generated letter tiles. By dragging and rearranging letter tiles into the word panel, Word Mania players build, extend and rebuild words.
Tom Richardson, CEO, LiteracyPlanet, says every year customers eagerly anticipate the start of Word Mania.
He said: “It’s a fantastic way to get kids excited and engaged in their literacy learning, as well as boosting their vocabulary and spelling skills, especially in the lead up to SATs.
“The motivating factors of competing against their peers and other schools, the goal of achieving the highest score in their school, and the incentive of prizes all contribute to the game’s appeal.
“It promises to be an exciting event, connecting schools across the globe. We can’t wait to see the creative and imaginative words that the children come up with.”
Word Mania has been shown to improve students’ word-building skills, and their knowledge of phonemes, morphemes, affixes and plurals, as well as spelling and word recognition by an average of 36% over the course of the competition.
“It is certainly impressive and worthwhile that an activity that is fun for students can also lead to improved literacy rates,” he added.
“It is important to remember that when students are engaged and motivated, they are more likely to invest time and effort into learning, which can lead to better outcomes. So, it’s great that an enjoyable activity like Word Mania can also contribute to a positive educational outcome like improved literacy rates.”
The 2023 Word Mania Warm-up Round runs from 6 March – 23 April, so students can get practicing and used to racing against the clock while they are creating their words. The Final Round, where the scores count, is on for only four days from 2 May – 5 May.
As a final bonus for school budgets, schools participating in Word Mania will be able to unlock complete access to LiteracyPlanet for free, so they can try thousands of fun interactive and engaging curriculum-aligned exercises.
Teachers can register their school online for free by visiting: https://www.literacyplanet.com/discover/wm-2023/
