Boy, do I have a bunch of downloads for you today! I originally created these cards for the game Signal, but I’ve since realized you can probably use them for other popular card games as well.
As you can see, each deck has 52 cards organized into the four suits (plus two “joker” cards). Instead of numbers, there are words and sentences that match each other. There are no face cards, which may limit some of the games you can play. However, I find that there are still many games you can adapt for your ESL class with these decks. Here are my favorites:
Signal
This game was a favorite of mine when I was a kid. I often played this with my younger cousins at family parties. Signal is also known as Kemps to some people in the world – and I found some variations to how it’s played online, but the rules I play with are as follows:
You need an even amount of students, as they will work in pairs. If there is an odd amount, then you can join in the game. It’s best to randomize the teams if the teacher is playing, so that no student feels like a loser by being stuck with the teacher.
The teams must then work together to create a secret signal. (usually a wink, a nod, etc…) When every team is done creating their signal everyone sits down in a circle. Teams should not be seated next to each other, rather they should sit opposite one another.
The teacher will deal out four cards each to the players, then pick a player at random. That person will have the rest of the deck in front of them and start the game by picking a card up, deciding whether to keep it or toss it, and then sliding the card they don’t want to the player on their left. That second player does the same, and soon all the players will be looking at cards and sliding them to the next person.
This continues until someone has a four of a kind, at that moment the person must try and subtly signal their teammate using what they decided on earlier. They win a point once their teammate yells, “SIGNAL!”. Then they can show their winning hand, and the cards can be reshuffled to play again.
Any other person may steal that point by yelling “CUT!” when they suspect someone has a four of a kind and before that person’s teammate can yell “signal”. If they are wrong, however, and the person they cut didn’t have a four of a kind – they lose a point.
Spoons
Spoons is remarkably similar to Signal except that it’s an every student for themselves kind of game. The core gameplay is the same: students sit in a circle and pass cards along to each other until someone has a four of a kind. In the center of the circle there are some spoons (or cups, or markers, or whatever thing you want your kids to grab). There should be one less spoon than the amount of students playing the game.
When a student has four of a kind, they must grab a spoon in the center. The other students, seeing that the first spoon was taken, race to grab the remaining spoons. The person without a spoon is the loser of that round.
Want to make this game even more wild? Only put a single spoon in the center, and while the kids are playing, hide the other ones around the classroom and/or around the school (depending on what your boss allows). Once the first student grabs the middle spoon, the others will have to stand up and go looking for the remaining spoons. This is a very chaotic way to play, so you should emphasize safety and caution before having them play this version. I love this version though, because chaos is fun.
Memory
This game is probably the easiest to explain to your students, as they’ve probably played it many times before. Just place the cards face down and have the kids take turns trying to match them. To make this game even simpler, only use two suits (such as hearts and diamonds) instead of all 52 cards. I also like to have the Joker cards mixed in as fun extra points to whoever matches them.
If you have a bigger class, I recommend putting them into teams. And if you want to make this more of a challenge, have the teams answer questions before allowing them to pick up cards – only right answers get a turn.
Go Fish
Unlike the other games listed, this game lets students practice their speaking skills as well as their reading/comprehension. Have the kids sit in a circle and hand out four cards to each of them, place the rest of the cards in the middle. The student will then take turns asking each other “do you have….?” and either receiving the card they asked for or having to “go fish” by drawing from the middle pile. The game ends when there are no more cards in the middle. Then the students look at what cards they have and the player with the most pairs wins.
The Decks
Feel free to download all of them! They are all designed to be playable in multitudes of ways, so let me know if you have any interesting games you’ve played with them.