Words With Friends Makes Prefixes Stick In Heights School

Words With Friends isn't just for adults passing time with their index finger at one Heights (13 points) school.

The wildly popular and addictive digital Scrabble clone is helping fourth and fifth graders at have a blast expanding their vocabularies.

Every Wednesday, 40 students get to play Words with Friends during lunch on iPads the . Principal Lesa Brinker says the students can't wait for the Electronic Scrabble Club each week.

Brinker was looking for inventive ways to help students improve their vocabulary. A fan of word games, she discovered WWF and began playing against some of the teachers at the school.

Soon the idea for introducing it to the students was born.

Brinker said the game forces students to look at letters, prefixes and suffixes in a different way. The students have generic user IDs so they can remain anonymous in their game play, Brinker said.

Students can play against their teachers and against each other.

English teacher Alison Daly, who served as the club’s moderator, will not let a student use a word if he or she does not know its meaning, and encourages the student to look it up in the dictionary before playing a word.

The popularity of the club -- it's not two sessions of 20 -- may eventually lead to a Scrabble-off competition for the students.  

iPads are also being implemented in the classroom for and