Flashcards in the Classroom: My Top 11 Activities

I love using flashcards in my classroom – they are brilliant visual tools, of course, and you can easily show new vocabulary without referring to the native tongue, but I also like their portability, versatility and adaptability. Plus they are so easy to create!

You can use flashcards to engage your students and support active learning, to make them move, to introduce new vocabulary and revise the one already covered… There are so many ways you can use them – and that’s why I decided to share my top 11 activities with flashcards. Theoretically they work well with children, however I tried some of these activities with teens and adults, and after the awkward silence at beginning, we had pretty much fun!

Basketball line-up

Great for: young learners

Place 2 lines of several flashcards. You need 2 players, a ball (doesn’t have to be a basketball) and „a basket” far away. To shoot the basket from far away is hard, so the players need to say the word on the card that is the farthest from the basket and make their way closer and closer each turn. When they feel that they can throw and hit the basket, they make their attempt. Each successful shot scores a point for their team.

True/false

Great for: all ages

Say the name of the card and at the same time show a random flashcard, and students guess whether what you say and show is true or false. Do it faster and faster, giving less and less time to think.

Vocabulary train

Great for: toddlers

Spread the flashcards around the room and arrange children in a „train”. When you say the name of the card, the children have to reach the correct station (card). When they arrive to the station, the child who is a locomotive moves to the end of the train, and play continues until each child can be a locomotive.

Spin the bottle

Great for: all ages

Ask students to sit in a circle and spread out the flashcards on the floor. Spin the bottle – the student that the bottle points to is the first and says one word of the target vocabulary using one of the flashcards as prompts. The next student will say the last word plus their own, and so on until it gets to the one who fails to make the logical connection. For example:
S1:”mouse”, S2: “mouse, cat”, S3: “mouse, cat, dog”, S4: “mouse, cat, dog, blue” (and S4 fails)

Lip reading

Great for: young learners

Children sit in a circle. Lay out the flashcards in front of you. Read the word on one of the cards by silently moving your lips. Children guess what word is being said and touch the appropriate flashcard. The first person to touch the correct card scores a point.

Flashcard race

Great for: toddlers, young learners

Lay out the flashcards in different places in the classroom. Children run around the room, at your command e.g. Find a monkey! etc. they must run to the appropriate flashcard as quickly as possible. The first person to touch the card (or stand on the card if they’re big enough) scores a point.

Slam!

Great for: young learners, teens

Divide the class into two teams. Place flashcards face down on a table and choose one student from each team (slammers) to come up to the table. Call out a vocabulary word that appears on one of the flashcards on the table, and the slammers race to find the flashcard with the correct word and slam their hand down on it. The first slammer to correctly identify the flashcard scores a point for their team, but if they slam their hand down on the wrong flashcard, they lose a point. After each round, the slammers return to their teams and two new students come up to the table to play the next round.

Changed places

Great for: toddlers

Children stand in a circle, some of them get the flashcards. Ask other children to close their eyes. Then, without saying the names, show the children holding the flashcards who should switch places. The other children then open their eyes and have to guess who changed places. Make sure that they do not give the names of friends, but the names of the cards.

What’s this?

Great for: toddlers

Sit with the children in a circle and lay out the flashcards face down in front of you. Show each card partially covered – you may use a scarf or a bigger sheet of paper with a hole in it. Children guess what is in the picture – they can move the template if they have trouble guessing, but they can’t see the whole picture.

What’s missing?

Great for: young learners

Lay out flashcards on the table, and ask the children to study them for a few seconds. Then, remove one of the cards and ask the children to guess which one is missing.

Conversation starter

Great for: teens, adults

Use flashcards to prompt conversations in pairs or groups. Students pick a random a card and then use the word or phrase on the card as a starting point for a conversation – the more random the word, the more hilarious conversation!

As you can see, there are many nice activities you can do with flashcards to make your students more engaged in the lesson. Do you work with flashcards? If yes, please share your favourite activity!