Whether you use ones that come with your textbook, find them on the internet or make your own (or get your students to make them!), flashcards are a great tool for the young learner teacher to have in their arsenal. Using pictures helps the teacher establish the meaning of new vocabulary quickly and easily – but they also provide lots of opportunities for games that require no prep time, provided you’ve remembered to take your flashcards with you. Here are four of my favourites…
Spider
For this game you’ll need a set of flashcards for vocabulary you want to practice, plus a flashcard featuring something ‘scary’: a spider, shark, monster or similar (it doesn’t matter if this card is completely unrelated to the rest of the vocabulary). Add the spider (or similar) flashcard to the other cards, so that it appears several cards in.
(NB: This game requires quite a lot of space, so it’s great to play outside if you have the opportunity to do so!)
- Ask your students to stand in a line along one side of the classroom. Stand at the opposite end of the room to them.
- Start by modelling the game – play a trial run to practise!
- Show the students a flashcard. They must collectively say the name of whatever is featured on the flashcard, and take one step forwards.
- Repeat with the next flashcard, so the line of students gets closer and closer to the teacher.
- When the students see the spider flashcard, they must turn and run back to their starting point as quickly as possible.
- Repeat until you feel that the vocabulary has been practised appropriately, or your students are worn out!
With older students this game can also be played as a competitive version, where the last student to reach the wall is out each time. Give your students a chance to be the ‘teacher’ and show the flashcards too!
Hide the Flashcard
This game gives lots of opportunity to practice questions with ‘Have you got…?’ ‘Yes, I have/No, I haven’t’ answers. For lower level students model and practice the correct question and answer forms first, and write them on the board as a reminder if appropriate.
- Get your students to sit in a circle.
- Nominate one student to be the ‘finder’. They must stand away from the group with their eyes closed (either just outside the classroom door, or the other end of the classroom is ideal).
- Choose a flashcard and give it to one of the students in the circle. They must hide the flashcard. (Choose how heavily you want to police this/what the parameters are. Ideally the student will sit on the flashcard, but I have taught classes where students will inevitably try and put it up their shirt/down their trousers/anywhere else they can think of).
- When the flashcard is hidden, the ‘finder’ returns to the group. Tell them ‘Please find the …(whatever the missing flashcard is)’.
- The ‘finder’ must guess who has the flashcard, asking their classmates ‘Have you got a/the …?’.
- When the flashcard is found, the student who was hiding it becomes the ‘finder’. Repeat the process with another flashcard.
Memory
This game gives lots of opportunity for group productive practice (drilling). It works best with between six and ten different flashcards!
If you’re playing with older students and/or sitting on the floor isn’t appropriate in your context, you can stick the flashcards to the board instead. Remember to use magnets or blutack to stick them rather than tape as you need to be able to turn the cards over quickly!
- Ask your students to sit on the floor in a circle.
- Show the first flashcard, and elicit what it is. Lay it on the floor in front of you in the middle of the circle.
- Repeat until all the flashcards are laid out in a line in the middle of the circle.
- Once you’ve drilled all the flashcards, turn one of them over.
- Repeat the process – but this time your students need to remember which picture is turned over in order to name the card correctly.
- Repeat until all the cards are face down, and your students need to remember and produce all the words in order.
What’s This?
This is a very energising game, so follow with something calming!
- Sit with your students in a circle. Take your first flashcard, turn to the student next to you, and ask them: ‘What’s this?’
- They must tell you what the flashcard is, then turn to the student next to them and ask ‘What’s this?’
- Repeat until each student has had a turn asking ‘What’s this?’, then introduce a new flashcard.
- You can then start to gradually introduce more flashcards, so that there are two or three different flashcards circulating around the group. Encourage your students to go as quickly as they can!
As an added twist, add your last flashcard moving the other way – so one card is moving round the circle anti-clockwise while the others move clockwise.
I hope these give you some new ideas (or remind you of some old favourites) and you enjoy playing them with your students!
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