Question card board games

What's great about the games below is that they generate a lot of discussion of the grammar/vocabulary points, and result in a lot of peer teaching. The teacher just needs to be there to settle any disputes and resolve any problems.

These games will require you to cut up the question cards. Usually they work best for teams of two against two, which means for a class of 16 students you'd need four sets of questions. It is worth it though - you'll use the games again and again, and I'm always lending them out to other teachers too.

For each group of students you need a game board and a set of question cards.


Game boards

Promotion game boardPromotion Game: Get students/teams to draw a picture of themselves as a counter. Elicit 'get promoted', 'get fired', 'get demoted'. Give them a time limit to play the game (say 10-15 minutes). They take it in turns to answer questions - promotion for correct answers, demotion for wrong answers. If someone gets to the top very quickly, don't stop the game - they should keep answering questions and try not to get demoted. At the end of the time limit, the student or team with the best job wins. The reason there are four windows per floor is so four students can play against each other, but two against two usually works best.

Horse race game boardHorse Race: Ideally, students should work in teams, two against two. Instead of a counter, teams should draw an animal on a post-it-note and use this to race against the other team. Before they start playing, it can be fun to get them to tell each other why their animal is better than the other animals (speed, beauty, intelligence etc.) - this should make them more motivated and competitive.

 

Football game: Vocabulary Games and Activities for Teachers: Book 2 by Peter Watcyn-Jones has a football game board which works well with these question cards too (as well as lots of other lovely games, obviously).

Question cards


Trivial pursuit style EFL questionsQuiz categories game

Have you ever played Trivial Pursuit? This game tests English in a similar way, with four categories of question (card suits - hearts, diamonds, spades and clubs). You'll need to download the question cards and their "backs" - photocopy the pages double sided with questions on one side, and hearts/diamonds etc on the other side. The full instructions are on the board game pdf below.