A few years ago I had some difficult year 10s. Instead of doing their work they would play a game called Bananas. One of them would give the others a letter, and they would each try and come up with a film, a popstar etc that started with that letter.
I decided to turn the tables on them and made a maths version.
I think literacy in mathematics often gets overlooked. Many students struggle with the words we use and their meanings. They also often struggle to decode questions. This helps to a limited degree, and it’s fun. Often when a student completes each category, it’s a worthwhile conversation talking about the words they have come up with and what their definitions are.
The online version is here. It’s set up to display nicely on a whiteboard.
If I were to modify this, I might make it so that some letters are more frequent than others.
It’s difficult to do for z.