ESL Card Game

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This is the most versatile game I’ve used since I started teaching and I will forever be indebted to the friend who showed it to me.

Materials needed:

1. A deck of playing cards

2. Chalkboard/whiteboard – if one is not available then print of the chart.

The first thing you will need to is transfer this chart onto the board

Explain to the students that there will be a series of rounds and each round has its own set of rules that will be explained before each round.

Round 1:

For the first round they will be given a card, or a series of cards, and they must give 2 words for each card. The words must begin with each respective letter their card represents. For example the number 2 card represents “B” and “O” so an acceptable answers would be, “Boy” and “Octopus”.

Round 2:

One, or both, of words must be an adjective(s).

Round 3:

One, or both, of the words must be an adverb(s)

Round 4:

The words can be anything they’d like, but they must form a sentence with the words. Taking the example from above, “The boy loves his pet octopus”

Round 5:

The students go in order creating sentence, but this time they all must create a story together.

Example:

Student 1: “The boy loves his pet octopus” (The number 2 card)

Student 2: “But his sister is frightened of his octopus” (The number 6 card)

Student 3: “But their mom took them to the zoo one day” (The King card)

You get the idea =)

This game is fantastic because you can add time limits, give points for correct answers, change the rules for tenses or whatever else you can think of.

One of my favorite variations of the game is when teaching a tense I will do the same round but write the tense form on the board.

Board Work:

Subject + has/have + Past Participle

(card)

And using their cards they must put the verb into its Past Participle form and the other card can be used for any other part of the sentence. This idea can be applied to any grammar form, so it’s one of my go to controlled practices within the classroom.