[Cary Dillen]

One of the activities I usually use for spelling warm ups, past tense verbs, or anything to do with words is to have a pile of the alphabet letters cut outs. I add several more vowels and the other letters that are double used in a word. Each group gets a pile of these letters.
You can divide the class into how many groups you want, even by ones. You say the word you want them to spell and the first group to finish spelling the word shouts "stop".,if its not correctly spelled, they continue until a group gets it. The students really learn and enjoy it.I´ve used it from 3rd graders on to highschool.
you can add several "rules " to this activity . for ex: if the children are loud, you can tell them to whisper, if not, they loose 1 point, and so on.
I Hope it helps!
Cary