Another game that is great for review purposes. Choose a set of flash cards that your students are familiar with. Hold the cards facing away from the students so that they can’t see the picture. The teacher looks at the first card and asks, “What is it/are they?”/ “What is he doing?” etc. Each student in turn asks “Is it a monkey?”, “Are they grapes?” “Is he running?” etc. Continue around the class until someone guesses correctly, and hand them the card. If the card hasn’t been guessed correctly within 2 or 3 turns the teacher says, “Sorry, it’s a….” and reveals the card to the students. Repeat the process for the next card in your hand. The student with the most cards at the end is the winner. Again, it’s not necessary to use the whole set of flash cards because they will be practicing lots of different vocabulary in any case. 5-8 minutes, depending upon the size of the class, should be sufficient if a fast pace is maintained throughout.

This can be played like the traditional kids game, or with a points scoring system like the American TV show, Wheel Of Fortune. ie. 1 point per correctly guessed letter. That latter system makes it easier to create a competitive game. It’s not necessary for students to be proficient readers, as this is a great game to practice phonics. Each time they guess a letter, they should say “A-ah”, “D-duh” etc. For beginners choose words which are easy to illustrate, phonics-wise. For more advanced learners of phonics, use more difficult words that they have studied. For the most advanced students, use whole phrases. It’s often better not to allow the students to guess the whole word once they have a few letters in place. That way, they get to remember common spelling mistakes caused by confusion between ‘L’ & ‘R’, ‘B’ & ‘V’, ‘A’ & ‘U’ etc. For larger classes, or those of varying ability, it’s best to divide the students into teams. For smaller classes, of equal ability, the students can play individually.