Spelling in the 1st grade

There are many aspects of spelling instruction that I have read in this article that are similar to what I am seeing in my classroom. However, the aspect that I see most prevalent in my classroom in teaching kids how to spell is teaching them through board games and card games. The master teacher in my classroom is a huge believer in using games to help her first graders learn. She has been teaching for many years and has realized that that no matter how hard she tries, she can not excite a child with a spelling test the way she can excite them with a competitive game.
She uses games that reflect spelling patterns, for instance, she has a game that has a stack of word endings, (ed,es,ing) and then it has a stack of beginning words (shar,be,try). The kids have one minute to make as many words as they can and the kid who creates the most legitimate words at the end of one minute wins.
Another similarity I found in the article and my classroom is spelling journals. The students in my classroom all have a spelling journal in their desk and are encouraged to write down a word or word pattern anytime they see aomething that they don't know or that excites them. I have seen students write down words in the middle of a science lesson that they had found helpful or interesting. My teachers goal is that at the end of the year the students will have a journal of words that they have written down and she hopes that they will feel passionately about these words since they are words that they have created on their own.
I have realized that spelling is a tricky thing in the first grade because a lot of the writing lessons that are required in my school want the kids to focus on content and not spelling. This is why my teacher tries to teach spelling in separate lessons and in a more creative way such as board games or spelling journals. So far I have found that my teacher's creative techniques have been more affective then the traditional spelling tests and I plan on trying to find creative ways to teach my own students how to spell when I become a teacher.