Posted in Games, Vocabulary Classes, Young Learners

MES flashcards: Games for young learners

This is a post in a series of 30  minute classes for young learners. They have been made for groups I teach which range from 4th to 6th of primary.

This is post is simply a list of games to use with the amazing free resources from:

http://www.mes-english.com/

They have a fantastic selection of downloadable flashcards divided into loads of categories. Each week I have been picking a new category, printing the flashcards and they game cards and playing one of the following games with my groups, it’s a great and fun way to quickly expand students vocabulary.

First stick the set of flashcards to the board and elicit the vocabulary and drill pronunciation.

Games:

Bingo – Students draw a 3×3 grid on a piece of paper and fill each box with a piece of vocabulary. You then read out sentences about each character, for example: “I breath fire and fly over the castle.” (Dragon) “I do magic and mix magic potions” (wizard) they cross off the characters they have as you describe them until they get a line or bingo (when they have crossed off all 9 squares).

Mimic – Print out the set of fantasy game cards from MES as well. Split the class into groups of 3-4, encourage the groups to think of an English name for their team. Then they take it in turns to send one member up to the board, this member then has 1 minute to mimic as many of the different characters using the game cards. Their team receives one point for each correctly guessed character. The team with the most points wins.

Board Games – Print out this great pirate gameboard:

Put students in groups of 3-4. Number the flashcards on the board 1-33 (cards will have more than 1 number) students then play the board game but every time they land on a square they have to make a sentence with the corresponding piece of vocabulary: EG “I brush my teeth with a toothbrush.”

Memory/Go fish – Print out multiple sets of the MES game cards, split students into groups of 3-4. Give them two sets of game cards, they spread the cards out face down on the table and play pairs/memory/go fish/whatever you call it where you’re from. Every time they turn over a card they have to say the vocab word and when they find a pair they have to make a complete sentence.

I welcome any more suggestions you might have for other flashcard games.

Author:

Barcelona based English Teacher, blogger and sometime actor and director.

One thought on “MES flashcards: Games for young learners

  1. This is for 6 yr. olds, probably 6 months or so of English. I gave them bubble letters on a full sheet of paper. They also had a set of phonic pictures, most, but not all, beginning with that letter. The students cut out the pictures and glued them to the letter. They made their own little board game.

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