Wordplay's Classroom Game Ideas
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Written by a teacher who spent nearly a decade living & teaching in Hanoi, this guide is great for anyone looking to get more comfortable in Vietnam. It includes great games & activities sections in the appendix.
Please add your favorite games to our database by filling out the form below.
Picture Card games
Bluff
- Invite several students to the board and ask them to stand in a row.
- Give each student a Picture Card and ask him/her to keep it secret from the class.
- The first student in the row says a word that might or might not correspond with the card he/she is holding.
- Students guess whether or not he/she is bluffing and say, Bluff! if they think he/she is bluffing.
- Divide the class into teams and award points when students guess correctly.
Collect the Cards
- Hold up any Picture Card.
- If a student can correctly identify it, he/she is allowed to keep it.
- The student with the most cards at the end of the game is the winner.
Correct Order
- Call four to eight students to the front of the class (according to the number of Picture Cards) and give them each a Picture Card.
- Then call out four cards in random order.
- Students have to arrange themselves in the correct order.
Easy or Difficult
- Divide twenty Picture Cards into two piles — an easy pile and a difficult pile.
- Divide the class into two teams.
- Each team is awarded five points if they correctly name a card from the difficult pile and two points for knowing a card from the easy pile.
- Use homemade picture cards of words from the cross-curricular pages to make the activity more challenging.
Echo
- Explain the meaning of the word “echo.” Ask students to be your echo.
- Show them a Picture Card and say the item on it.
- Ask students to echo it by repeating several times and becoming quieter and quieter.
Face Race
- Give each student a number between 1 and 10.
- Stick the face Picture Cards on the board or draw a picture of a face.
- Say, Number (2), (Nose).
- All students assigned number (2) race to the board and touch the (nose).
- Alternatively, play the game with three or four teams, assigning each student from each team a number.
Guess the Card
- Cut out a small square in the center of a piece of A4 size paper.
- Hold the sheet in front of a Picture Card, allowing students to see only a small part of the picture through the hole.
- Students guess the item.
Hit The Card
- Stick all the Picture Cards of one vocabulary category on the board in mixed order.
- Call two students to the front of the room to stand a meter or two from the board.
- Call out a word.
- The first student to run to the board and “hit” the correct card wins.
- Play the game in teams and award points for each correct “hit.”
Memory Game
- Stick four or five Picture Cards on the board.
- After students memorize the cards, remove them from the board and students say the items.
- To make the game more challenging, ask students to say the cards in the order they appeared on the board.
Name That Card
- Divide the class into two teams.
- Invite a student from each team to come to the front of the class and turn their back to you.
- Hold up a Picture Card and count to three and say, Turnaround.
- The first student to turn around and correctly identify the card is awarded a point for his/her team.
- Continue with other Picture Cards.
Pass the Cards
- Choose five Picture Cards and pass them face down around the classroom at intervals, so students cannot see the cards.
- When you say, Stop, ask, Who has the (dog)?
- Students guess who has the Picture Card of the (dog).
Picture Card Mime
- Invite a student to the front of the classroom. Show him/her a card while hiding it from the rest of the class.
- He/She mimes the word silently.
- The student who correctly guesses the word is the next one to come forward.
Snap
- Write a word on the board or say an item from a specific group of Picture Cards.
- Show several cards one by one.
- Students shout, Snap! when they see the corresponding card.
Sort the Cards
- Divide the class into small groups.
- Mix Picture Cards from different units together and divide them into piles according to the number of groups.
- Students arrange them back into categories, e.g., colors, animals, family members, etc.
- The first group to finish is the winner.
Sponge Throw
- Place Picture Cards face up on the floor or large table.
- Students throw a sponge or another soft object and identify the card it lands on.
Tic-Tac-Toe
- Divide the class into two teams. One is “O” and the other is “X”
- Draw a large grid on the board with nine spaces.
- Stick one Picture Card in each space facing toward the board. Students select a card, turn it over and say the. word on the Picture Card.
- If it is correct, remove the Picture Card and write an “O” or an “X” accordingly.
What’s Missing?
- Place several Picture Cards face up on the floor or on a large table.
- Allow students a few minutes to study them.
- Tell students to close their eyes and remove a card.
- Students have to correctly identify the missing card.
Where Is It?
- Stick Picture Cards in different places around the classroom.
- Call out one of the items and students find and point to the correct card.
- Alternatively, say a sentence containing the item, e.g., I like apples, and students point to or retrieve the Picture Card of the apple.
Who Has It?
- Invite several students to the board and give a different Picture Card to each.
- Students hold their cards up to show the class.
- Ask, Who has the (apple)?
- Students point and answer, He/She has the (apple).
Who’s the Fastest?
- Divide the class into two teams.
- Stick a number of Picture Cards on the board.
- Invite two students to stand facing the cards on different sides of the board.
- Call out one of the words.
- The student who is the fastest to touch the card wins a point for his/her team.
TPR Games
Aye, Aye, Captain!
- You are the captain. Give orders to the class.
- This is a useful activity to review actions, parts of the body, colors, numbers, and classroom objects.
- For example, order, Jump three times. Touch your head. Turn around.
- Students say, Aye, aye, Captain! and carry out the order.
- Model a few times and then invite students to be the captain.
Basketball
- Ask a question to a student. If he/she answers correctly, he/she has a shot at the basket.
- If the student gets the ball in the basket, he/she wins two points.
- If he/she only hits the basket, he/she wins one point.
- The student with the most points is the winner.
- This game can also be played in teams.
Chair Race
- Divide the class into two teams. Each team stands in a line with a chair at the front of the line and another chair a few meters across the room.
- A student from each team sits in the chair at the front of his/her line.
- Call out an action, e.g., Jump!
- The students must jump to their team‘s chair on the other side of the room.
- The first student to sit on the chair after doing the correct action wins a point for his/her team.
Guess the Object
- Place an object in a bag fora student to feel, e.g., toy food or plastic animals.
- He/She must guess what the object is without looking.
Number Groups
- Play some lively music and ask students to perform a specific action (e.g., jump, walk, hop) around the classroom.
- Stop the music and call out a number from 2 to 5.
- Students must quickly get together in groups of that number.
- Students who do not manage to form a group of the correct number must sit out until the next round.
Pass the Ball
- Students stand in a large circle.
- Make a paper ball (or use a softball), then call out a category, e.g., family, and throw the ball to a student.
- He/She must say a word in the category you mentioned.
- He/She then throws the ball to another student who says another word in the same category.
- If a student drops the ball, he/she must sit down.
- Continue until one student remains.
Question Throw
- Throw a softball to a student and ask a question.
- The student answers the question and throws the ball to another student, asking another question, e.g., Can you swim? Yes, I can. /No, I can’t.
- Continue until all students have had a turn to ask and answer.
Sequence Throw
- Say a day of the week, e.g., Wednesday, and throw a softball to a student.
- He/She says the following day of the week and throws the ball to another student.
- They go on until someone makes a mistake.
- Play this game to practice any lexical set that involves a sequence, such as ordinal numbers, time, and months of the year.
Teacher Says
- Give the students instructions but tell them to follow the instructions only if they are preceded by ‘Teacher says.”
- If you say, Pick up a pencil, students should do nothing, but if you say, Teacher says pick up a pencil, students must pick up a pencil.
- They are out of the game if they do an action when they should not.
- Vary the speed of the instructions to make the game more interesting.
- You could also ask some students to give the instructions.
Team Games
Category Writing
- Divide the class into groups. Each group chooses their “captain.”
- Write the name of a vocabulary category on the board, e.g., sports, food, or animals.
- Each group tells their captain to write as many words as they can which belongs to that category.
- They have one or two minutes to do that.
- Each group takes one point for each correct word.
- Pay close attention to spelling.
Charades
- Divide the class into two groups.
- Write down vocabulary words on strips of paper.
- Choose a member from each group to come up to the front of the class.
- Take one of the strips of paper and show it to the two students.
- Next, ask them to face their groups, with their backs turned against each other.
- Without talking, the students act out the vocabulary for their group to guess.
- Set a time limit of 60 seconds.
- The student who correctly guesses the vocabulary word first wins the round and earns a point for his/her group.
- The group with the highest score wins the game.
Clothesline
- Cut out several items of clothing from different colors of card, e.g., a pink skirt, a black T-shirt, a green shoe, and an orange dress.
- Stick the clothes on the board in a line.
- Alternatively, pin them to a real length of string hung to look like a clothesline.
- Give students a few minutes to study the order of the clothes.
- Remove the clothes cards.
- Now students draw and color the clothes in the same order.
- Students could also label the clothes to make this more challenging.
- If you do not have much time, students could simply recite the order.
- Play this game in teams and award points for correct answers.
Drawing Race
- Divide the class into two teams and invite a student from each team to the front of the class.
- Whisper a word to the two students.
- Each student draws the item on the board.
- The first team to identify the picture correctly wins a point.
Name the Shape
- Cut out several shapes from colored paper.
- Stick or carefully pin a shape to the back of a student’s shirt without the student seeing the shape.
- The student turns around to reveal the shape to the class.
- He/She tries to guess which shape and color it is.
- Elicit, A blue triangle? A red square
- For more confident classes, suggest that when the volunteer guesses the correct shape but the wrong color, the class shouts, Shape!
- Likewise, when the student guesses the correct color but the wrong shape, the class shouts, Color!
Parachute
- Play a guessing game in teams.
- Draw a large parachute on the board with some strings leading to a stick figure hanging from the parachute.
- Think of a word students have learned and draw a dash inside the parachute for each letter in the word.
- Students from one team try to guess the word.
- For each incorrect guess, erase one of the parachute’s strings.
- Award points to the team when they guess the word correctly.
- If all the parachute’s strings are erased before students guess the word, then that team loses a point.
- To make it more interesting, draw a shark emerging from the sea below the stick figure.
Phonics Race
- Divide the class into several groups.
- Call out a letter-sound.
- Students write as many words containing the letter-sound as possible during a given amount of time.
- Award students one point for each correct word.
Spelling Bee
- Divide the class into two teams.
- The first player on Team A is given a word to spell.
- If correct, the team gets a point.
- This can also be done as a class competition, by having students line up and given words one by one.
- When they make a mistake they sit down.
- The last student standing is the winner.
