Students in Years 1 – 9 represent their school to race against the clock to build as many words as they can in three minutes from 15 randomly generated tiles.

There are prizes up to the equivalent of AUD$207,000 (£103,000/US$138,000) up for grabs for the top players that win the Competition Round.

The competition is open to all schools! You don’t have to be a LiteracyPlaneteer to enter the competition. Schools will need to have at least 25 students in or between Years 1 to 9.

LiteracyPlanet customers must be up to date with their billing to be eligible to compete.

If your school has a LiteracyPlanet account you have automatic access to Word Mania. Teachers should contact LiteracyPlanet at hello@literacyplanet.com to arrange competition logins for additional students who don’t use the program. Those students will have full access to the LiteracyPlanet platform for the duration of the competition.

If your school does not have a LiteracyPlanet account, teachers can register their students at the top of this page. You must be registered with a School Account to access Word Mania.

1. If on desktop, after logging in, select the Word Mania tile at the top of your screen in the menu.
2. Once in Word Mania, click ‘Start’ on the Word Mania game. There is a three-second countdown before a board of 15 randomly generated letters are revealed and the three-minute countdown starts.
3. Drag letters into the word dock, and arrange or rearrange them to create words.
4. Click ‘Mark’ to score each word.
5. Drag letters out of the dock to remove them, or press ‘Clear’ to start again.
6. At the end of each three-minute game, players receive a game score and a number of valid words built.

Your students can play Word Mania:

• On Desktops via Windows and Mac browsers: Google Chrome (recommended), Safari (MacOS 11),  Microsoft Edge (Chromium version).
  Students will just need to click the “W tile” in the menu bar at the top.
  
• On tablets or mobile devices via the App Store or Google Play.
  

NOTE: The Word Mania Mobile App is supported on the following devices:

• iPhone (SE/6 or higher), iPad (3 or higher), iPad Mini (2 or higher) with iOS 9.1 or higher.
• Android 4.4 or above with a screen of 720p or higher.

You can find your school’s ranking on the Leaderboards here.

^ Make sure you select your region and year/grade level.

NOTE: There are three regions in Word Mania. This means, there will be three different sets of winners. For example, there will be a first-place winner in each year level in the “Australia & New Zealand” region and there will be another set of first-place winners in each year level of the “Global” region.

Leaderboards in the Teacher Dashboard

• School Leaderboard in your Teacher Dashboard: This leaderboard will reflect the one on literacyplanet.com/discover/wm-leaderboard/.
• Student Leaderboard in your Teacher Dashboard: This leaderboard is for you to see how your students are going individually. You can award superstars with our WM Student Certificate template in the Teacher Resource section.

Your students can play Word Mania:

• On Desktops via Windows and Mac browsers: Google Chrome (recommended), Safari (MacOS 11),  Microsoft Edge (Chromium version).
  Students will just need to click the “W tile” in the menu bar at the top.
  
• On tablets or mobile devices via the App Store or Google Play.
  

NOTE: The Word Mania Mobile App is supported on the following devices:

• iPhone (SE/6 or higher), iPad (3 or higher), iPad Mini (2 or higher) with iOS 9.1 or higher.
• Android 4.4 or above with a screen of 720p or higher.

The key competition dates are built around UTC to facilitate schools around the world. To make it a little easier for you, please see below for timings specific to these countries.

The Warm-up Round is the registration and practice period – to give students a chance to warm up before the competition (where the scores count).

The Competition Round is where scores will count and schools will go head to head for the major prizes and bragging rights.

The Word Mania competition is by year level for Years 1 to 9. The more year levels that are participating the more chances your school has to win.

Here’s what schools can win during the competition:

• Warm-up Round Certificates: For schools that place at the top of their Warm-up Round Leaderboard by the end of the round.
• Redeemable credits that add up to AUD$207,000 (£103,000/US$138,000) of LiteracyPlanet subscriptions for first, second and third placings in each year in each region. All schools that place first will also receive a gift voucher to use towards school supplies.

To compete in a year level a school must have at least five students from that year level competing. Schools can see their ranking on the public leaderboard on LiteracyPlanet’s website.

A school’s score is the sum of the top 50 game scores achieved by a minimum of five students in that year level, with no more than 10 scores achieved by one student.

There are three regions in Word Mania. This means, there will be three different sets of winners. For example, there will be a first-place winner in each year level in the “Australia & New Zealand” region and there will be another set of first-place winners in each year level in the “UK” and “Global” regions.

Region 1: Australia & New Zealand

• Australia
• New Zealand

Region 2: United Kingdom

• United Kingdom
• Scotland
• Scottish Islands
• England
• Wales
• Northern Ireland
• Ireland

Region 3: Global

The “Global” region includes ALL other countries outside of Regions 1 and 2 above.

These regions are reflected on the Leaderboard.

No. Every school that has at least five students from the same year level playing Word Mania has a chance to win! Skill scores are based on the sum of the highest 50 game scores from at least five students from the same year level in a school.

If you are experiencing a problem using one of the browser/platform combinations we support, please contact our technical support team for assistance by emailing hello@literacyplanet.com.

If you are experiencing a problem on an unsupported browser/platform combination, the issue might be resolved by using one of the supported browsers mentioned above.

LiteracyPlanet is a safe website for children. We recommend that children keep their username and password in a secure place and do not share it with anyone besides their parents and teacher.

We advise against publishing usernames on the Internet and if playing on a shared computer, tablet or phone, to remember to properly log out when finished.

Word building is a fun challenge that involves many different literacy skills:

• Phonemes
• Morphemes including affixes and plurals
• Spelling
• Word recognition
• Vocabulary
• Word knowledge

Word Mania tests and improves these skills, with the added challenge of speed!

Visit the Competition Rules and Term & Conditions page.