Anastasia Pistopoulou's blog Teaching English! 

Students just love cards! Here are some ways to use them in class:

1. Comics

Print a short comic from sites such as GoComics , cut it and let your students put the images back in order.

2. Mime

A student stands up, picks a card and does some miming, as written on the card. The rest of the class try to guess what s/he is doing.

3. Use of “should”

To make them use “should” in sentences, I let 2 students stand up and one of them picks a card with a “problem” written on it. S/he talks about it with the other student, who gives him/her a piece of advice using “should”.

4. Roleplays

I usually pick a boy and a girl for this task. They pick “identity” cards and get to know each other by asking questions, based on the information they see on the cards.

5. Word order

I wrote 5 questions and 5 answers in cards and the students worked in groups in order to put the words in the correct order. Whenever a group found a question, I wrote it on the left side of the board. All the answers were written on the right side of the board and when all groups finished I let them match the questions with the answers (e.g. Do you speak German? –> No, I only speak English).

6. Riddles

A student picks a riddle and reads it aloud to the rest of the class. Make them challenging! (The answer to the riddle in the photo: a cold!).

7. Make a sentence

I go around the classroom and each student picks a card. Their task is to make a sentence that includes the given word or phrase.

8. Answer the question

Just like the “surprise bags” that I use, they pick a card and answer the question.

9. Fortune teller

To practise the Future Simple Tense, 2 students come to the front of the class and one of them acts as the fortune teller, whereas the other one acts as the customer.

10. Taboo

The well-known game! Describe the word to your classmate, so that s/he can find it, without using the words written underneath it. Because of the difficulty of the game, I usually allow my students to use these words in their description.

11. “Hello” in different languages.

In order to celebrate the European Day of Languages, you can write the word “Hello” on cards, in as many languages as you can! Show them one by one (e.g. Ciao), read them aloud and let them guess the language! You can write each language on the back of the card (e.g. Italian), so that you can turn it over and let them check their answer.

12. Story cards

Take the beginning paragraph of a short story and write each sentence on a different card. Show the students one card at a time and let them guess what the story is about and what the next sentence is.

This beginning sentence, for example, is from a short story called “The Slow Computer”. When you have finished with the cards, you can either reveal the rest of the story or you can assign it as a creative writing task.

13. Useful English Phrases

I was trying to find another way to revise useful, everyday English and here’s what I came up with! Folded pieces of paper! Write the question on the outside, show it to the class, let them guess the answer, unfold it and reveal it!

Preparing card games at home or downloading them from the internet is so easy and fun! Make sure, though, you change your card games from time to time, as students get easily bored!