WORD HUNTER! 150 Slides for Morning Work, Brain Break Activity, Bell Ringers

How many words can your students find before time runs out?!

Get students settled, focused and thinking with 150 ready-to-use Word Hunter challenges that are perfect for bell ringers, morning work, brain breaks, literacy activities, transitions and those random five-minute gaps when you need something meaningful on the board FAST.

Students are given a string of letters and challenged to create as many words as they can before time runs out.

Simple enough to explain in seconds.

Flexible enough to use with almost any class.

And surprisingly competitive 😅

With 7, 8 and 9-letter challenges, you can easily choose the level that works best for the students in front of you.

 

What’s Included:

✓ 150 ready-to-use Word Hunter letter challenges

✓ 7-letter challenges

✓ 8-letter challenges

✓ 9-letter challenges

✓ Clickable navigation so you can jump straight to the challenge level you want

✓ PowerPoint version

✓ Google Slides version

✓ Editable slides so you can create your own Word Hunter challenges using vocabulary, keywords or concepts from your lessons

✓ Editable instructions so you can change the way you run the activity

✓ Printable answer template for students to record their words

 

How to play:

1. Choose a 7, 8 or 9-letter challenge.
2. Students use the letters provided to create as many words as possible before time runs out.
3. You decide how long they have.
4. Most words wins!

Want to adjust the difficulty?

You can allow students to reuse letters within their words, or make the challenge trickier by allowing each letter to be used only as many times as it appears.

You can also run Word Hunter as an individual challenge, pair activity or team competition.

 

Perfect for:

✏️ Bell Ringers & Starter Activities

Have something structured and engaging ready on the board as students enter the room.

✏️ Morning Work

Give students an easy-to-understand challenge they can begin independently.

✏️ Brain Breaks

Change the pace of a lesson with a quick challenge that still gets students thinking.

✏️ Literacy Activities

Build vocabulary, spelling and word knowledge through a low-pressure game.

✏️ Transitions

Use Word Hunter to help refocus students after break time or between lesson activities.

✏️ Settling an Unsettled Class

Redirect attention into a clear, structured challenge that students can get started on quickly.

✏️ Five-Minute Time Fillers

Keep students engaged right until the bell instead of letting those final few minutes dissolve into chaos. 🙌

✏️ Team Challenges

Turn it into a whole-class competition and see which student, pair or team can find the most words.

Why you’ll love ‘Word Hunter’!

♡ 150 challenges means serious mileage.

You’ll have a huge ready-to-go bank to draw from throughout the year.

♡ Choose from 7, 8 or 9 letters.

Easily adjust the challenge depending on the age, ability or energy of your class.

♡ It works across subjects and grade levels.

The simplicity of the activity means you can make it as accessible or challenging as you need.

♡ It’s editable.

Create your own versions using keywords, concepts and vocabulary that connect directly to your teaching.

♡ Clickable navigation makes it FAST.

Choose your letter length and jump straight into an activity without endlessly scrolling through slides.

♡ It gives unstructured time some structure.

Word Hunter is exactly the sort of activity you’ll be grateful to have sitting there when you suddenly discover you have five minutes left.

♡ Students can work independently OR collaboratively.

Use it as a quiet settling task, pair challenge, team competition or whole-class game.

Use Word Hunter as a Teaching Tool too!:

This is where Word Hunter gets REALLY useful.

Because the slides are editable, you can duplicate a slide and add your own letter strings, keywords or lesson content.

Use it to:

✓ introduce subject-specific vocabulary

✓ revisit key terminology

✓ embed literacy into any subject

✓ reinforce spelling patterns

✓ introduce a new topic

✓ create challenges linked directly to your current unit

It gives you an easy way to embed literacy and subject-specific language into lessons without it feeling like another worksheet.

 

ONE SIMPLE CHALLENGE. SO MANY USES.

Word Hunter can be:

a two-minute brain break

a quiet morning task

a competitive whole-class game

a vocabulary activity

a bell ringer

a lesson transition

a literacy starter

a five-minute lifesaver

And because the basic routine stays the same while the letters constantly change, students know exactly what to do without the activity becoming repetitive.

150 challenges. 7, 8 and 9-letter options. Editable slides. Clickable navigation. PowerPoint + Google Slides.

One very handy way to keep students thinking right up until the bell.

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💛 Want even more ready-to-go brain breaks?

This resource is also included in my Brain Break Mega Bundle, packed with 1000+ slides, activities and prompts for brain breaks, bell ringers, morning work, settling activities and those random five-minute gaps throughout the year.