I believe every teacher, no matter what subject/age they teach, should have a deck of cards in their arsenal of teaching supplies. There are just so many different ways you can utilize it in the classroom! You can divide teams randomly by having students draw from the deck. In one of my classes, I randomized sitting by having students draw cards from the deck and match them to the desk with the same card. And, of course, there are innumerable games you can play. So here is a list of my favorite ESL games.
King’s Cup
I’ve written a whole article about this game here. This game is based on the drinking game of the same name. The basics of the game is this: there is a deck of cards spread out in the middle that student take turns drawing from. Each card has a rule that must be followed while drawn. My rules are usually things like, “everyone must raise both hands and whoever is the slowest answers an ESL question”. We also play for points. It’s one of my student’s favorite review games and they ask for it constantly.
Red Card Black Card Quiz
This isn’t really a game so much as an easy way to quickly quiz your students. Give each student one red card and one black card. Then tell them one color means yes/true/correct and the other means no/false/wrong. Once they understand that, you simply have to ask questions and see how they answer.
Sometimes we use this for a lying game. The students take turns telling small anecdotes and the others will use the cards to indicate whether or not they think it’s true.
I also like to use this to quickly see if student can recognize a poorly worded sentence. I’ll say something and then they will indicate whether the sentence was grammatically correct or not.
There are multiple ways you can use this – it’s so easy. The students don’t get enough talk time with this activity, however. Therefore, I like to ask follow up questions between each quiz question so that the students can discuss more.
Liar
This is a more school appropriate version of a game I’ve played called bullshit. The whole deck is dealt to the players. Their goal is to get rid of all their cards first to win. One student will have the ace of spades and they will go first. They will place the amount of ace cards they have face down in the center and say something like, “I have two aces.”. The next person places however many twos they have. This continues on and on in a circle. When a player finds they don’t have the card they need, they MUST lie about it. So the student will place a different card face down and lie about it being the correct card. If another player thinks they are lying they will say, “Liar!”. The card in question is flipped. If the card is wrong, the person who placed the card takes all the cards in the center and adds it to their hands. If the car is right, then the person who called it out takes the cards. This continues until either time is up or someone manages to get rid of all their cards.
Cookie Jar
This is based on the rhyme that goes: “Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar? *name* stole the cookie from the cookie jar. Who me? Yes, you. Not me. Then who?”
First, deal an equal amount of cards to the players. Among these cards will be one joker. That joker is the “cookie”. Then the students take turns figuring out who has the cookie. They would say the rhyme, point at the person they suspect of having the cookie, and then take one card from that person’s hand. If the card is the cookie they win. If it’s not the cookie, the student they picked gets to go next. Encourage your students to repeat the rhyme each and every turn. As they get used to saying it out loud, you can have them speak faster and play faster to make the game more challenging.
Mafia
Mafia is a fun party game where a group of people are put into different roles. Each card represents the different roles a player can be (I typically use spades as the mafia). My classes in Taiwan and Korea were quite small so instead of having several mafia members, a doctor, and a detective – only one or two people are in the mafia. Their goal is to “kill” enough of the other players that the ratio of civilian to mafia is 1:1. The civilian’s goals are to eliminate the mafia.
Once the students are put into their roles the teacher tells them all it’s night time and everyone must sleep. They all close their eyes and then the teacher tells the mafia to wake up and point at someone to kill. They close their eyes again and then a teacher tells everyone to “wake up”. This is where they can practice their argumentative/persuasion skills by talking with each other and trying to figure out who is the mafia. After a minute or so they vote on who to “kill” and the teacher will say whether or not that person is guilty. If they are guilty, that’s good for the civilians but if not that means the mafia is still out there and another round must be played.
This is the most basic version of the game, you can find more in depth discussion here. Mafia is very fun but it can also be time consuming. You can make it go faster by using a timer for each round. However, if you have a free day where timing doesn’t matter I would encourage longer discussions. My students love this game so much they barely even realize they’re practicing English.
Rock Paper Scissors Card
This is an easy way to practice any question you’ve taught. First, review the questions and answers they must practice. After that, deal an equal amount of cards to each student (I usually give them five cards each). Then, set a timer. The students will walk around asking and answering questions. Once that’s done they will do a quick game of rock paper scissors and the person who wins takes a card from the person who loses. So the interaction would look like this:
Student 1: Where are you from?
Student 2: I’m from Spain.
Both: Rock paper scissors! (Student 1 wins)
Student1: YES!!! (takes a card from Student 2 before moving to another student)
Walk around and make sure they are practicing correctly. You can have your own cards and play as well. This is also a way to be able to hear every student pronounce the words. If you hear a student make a mistake, you can stop and correct them without embarrassing them in front of the whole class. Sometimes a student may run out of cards before the time is up. What I would do in this situation is purposefully lose so that the student can get one of my cards. It’s a bit tricky to do this, so sometimes I just sneakily hand the student some cards to keep them in the game. When the timer goes off, the student with the most cards wins.
Count Up
This is a very easy game for small children to play. Unlike in Liar, the goal of this game is to get as many cards as you can. Take out all the face cards and deal the rest out. Deal the cards out to everyone and tell them they cannot look at their cards. One by one the students place a card in the center while calling out a number. You can have them call out the face cards as is or just say 11,12,13 instead. When the card being placed matches the number said out loud, players race to slap the cards. First person that does gets all the center cards added to their hand. The game ends either when time is up or when someone manages to get the whole deck in their hand.
You can also make this game more complicated by adding some rules from the card game Egyptian Rat Screw. For example, if the card put down matches the card under it the players can slap. They can also slap when there is a “sandwich” (for example 5,7,5 is placed) or if the two cards on top can be added to equal 10. If a player slaps by mistake they must place a card under the pile.
This game doesn’t practice a lot of English, but it’s a fun filler game and at least they are saying numbers in English.