UK schools compete for £80,000 worth of prizes in Word Mania competition

Word Mania, the world’s biggest and most fun online literacy competition is back again – better than ever before! Brought to you by LiteracyPlanet this word-building game invites school children from the UK to battle it out against other schools to WIN up to £80,000 worth of prizes.

Open for free to all schools and participants in years 1-9, Word Mania has students racing against the clock to build as many words as they can from a set of 15 randomly generated letters. By dragging and rearranging letter tiles into the word panel players have 3 minutes to make, extend and rebuild words to help their school climb the leaderboard.

“We’re so excited to bring Word Mania back to schools this year,” says Tom Richardson, CEO, LiteracyPlanet.

“Our customers love it and are always asking when it’s coming back. It’s a great way for children to improve their spelling, word recognition, and word knowledge while having fun and sharing this experience with their teachers and classmates.”

“Plus, it’s a prudent way in which other schools can trial LiteracyPlanet and really see how the programme supports and delivers improved literacy outcomes for their students.”

Thousands of students are already competing in the Word Mania practice round globally with 1,400 schools and 66 countries having played more than 700,000 games and built a combination of an amazing 13 million words! The Practice Round ends on 20th March 2022, with the Competition Round starting from 21st – 25th March 2022 and the Final Round from 30th March – 1st April 2022.

Speaking about the extra benefits aside from the prizes, Mark Nicholls, Literacy Development Manager UK, LiteracyPlanet explains,

“The word building challenges in Word Mania involve many skills such as phonemes, morphemes, spelling, word recognition, vocabulary and word knowledge. Combining these with gamification and a competitive environment, we find it is a great way to engage children and improve literacy skills.”

“In past years average game scores have increased by 36% over the course of the competition.”

There are some early challengers in the practice round, with local UK primary and secondary school leaders including:

• Year 9 – Framlingham College, Suffolk
• Year 8 – Cardinal Allen Catholic High School, Fleetwood
• Year 7, 6 & 5 – Bickley Park School, Bromley
• Year 4 – Pop Art Home Education Group
• Year 3 – Kings Oak Primary Learning Centre, Barnsley
• Year 2 – St Cedd’s School, Chelmsford
• Year 1 – Craigmarloch School, Port Glasgow

As an added bonus in 2022, teachers can access the LiteracyPlanet platform for free during Word Mania giving them the full power of the curriculum-aligned online exercises and time-saving class reporting capabilities.

Registrations for Word Mania are still open until 20th March: https://www.literacyplanet.com/discover/wm-2022/