Card Games and Board Games as an ELL Resource

We're two months into the new academic year and I have slowly been introducing a few card games to my lower elementary classes. Most of the students in these classes are ELLs at a beginner level, so my goal is combining ESL and ELA instruction. The children really enjoy these card games, and I've also noticed that these games elicit more spoken language from them as well - even the students who are hesitant to speak in English. 

The most important thing is that you don't actually have to go out and buy a whole bunch of games to create a range of fun and engaging games for your students. In fact, most of the time, you can use your usual classroom resources - like flashcards - and turn them into games.

While I don't have pictures of my card games or board games, I'll use this placeholder. But photos are incoming!

 

One Resource, Many Games 

Vocabulary, Phonics, and Phrases with "Alphabet Go Fish" 

If you have letter flashcards, this is a great game to use with students who still struggle with letter recognition, but also for students who don't know how to say the names of the letters in English or who still mix up certain sounds. In my case, my French-speaking students get confused between G/J, A/I, E/I, U/W, and a couple of others. My Grade 1 students played an alphabet form of Go Fish a number of times, which not only allowed them to practice the letter names in English, but also had them modeling a specific kind of phrase:

Do you have [letter]?

No, I don't. Go fish! / Yes, I do. 

This game alone reinforces a range of different skills, and you can easily modify it for other target skill acquisition objectives. For example, you could have students make the sound that the letter they want makes rather than asking for the letter itself. In this way, you can also check for phonological awareness. 

A more complex version may require them to read the vocabulary word on the card that starts with that letter, or recall a word that you've learned that starts with that letter, and ask for that instead. (For context, our cards have the letter accompanied by a word underneath that starts with that letter, as well as a little image of that word. Ex: U, umbrella, image of an umbrella.)

I've also been using this as a remedial tool for students who, at a Grade 2 level, still never learned letter recognition (in any language) or any kind of phonological awareness. This is a unique challenge that I have this year, with almost half of my class facing this issue (due to a perfect storm of different histories and reasons). Making the learning into a game makes it easier for them to feel more confident about their learning while having fun. 

Phonics with Letter Blocks 

Another game we've been playing for our Phonics segment is a CVC / CCVC / CVCC word formation game, with up to 4 players at a time. I made a set of phonics flashcards and printed and laminated them for use in class, and then realized they could be used for this kind of game as well. 

Students have a deck of cards with the target phonics words (focusing on the phonics lessons you've been working on), face down in the middle of the table. They each have a set of 4 wooden blocks with different letters on each side. One of them flips over the first card, reads out the word, and they create the word with the blocks. As I have some students who still struggle with letter recognition, this is a good way to reinforce that for them. 

For students who don't struggle with letter recognition, we turn it into a race - who can make the word first? A modified version removes the card deck; I say the word, and they create it based on the sounds they hear. I've noticed that the children naturally say the word out loud a few times by the time they're done making it, which helps strengthen their phonemic awareness skills. 

If you don't have blocks, you can use Scrabble tiles or just print out and laminate letter squares, giving each student their own set (just make sure they have enough of the letters they need to make the word so they don't get stuck without a letter that they need - like two Es instead of just one). Of course, you can also use this kind of a setup with vocabulary words, which I sometimes do as a form of early-bird activity for students who come to school early.

Vocabulary, Grammar, and Phrases with Themed Flashcards

And then there are the games that I create using vocabulary flashcards that we have. For example, I have 2 sets of antonym flashcards. While we're still learning the vocabulary words, we play one of two games with them: a memory game, where they have to match the same words (for example, quiet and quiet), and a simple card game that follows the basic rules of Ronda. The cards come with images, and the students read them out loud when they turn them over. Like sight words, the more they see these words, the more easily they recall them, including the shapes and spellings of the words. 

For more advanced learners, I'll have them play one of the two games, but looking for the antonym rather than the same word repeated (ex: matching quiet with loud, or winning a card with its antonym in Ronda). 

This is why having playing-card-sized flashcards can be so helpful, too. Say you are teaching your students a set of themed vocabulary. For example, you're working on the words for different items in their pencil cases (eraser, ruler, sharpener, pencil, pen, marker, etc.). Expanding from my first example, you can play a Go Fish style game which reinforces the same kinds of phrases. "Do you have a sharpener?" "No, I don't. Go fish!" 

If you're learning, for example, sports vocabulary, you might have the students ask each other "Do you play basketball?" rather than "Do you have a basketball?", and if they do have a card that says "basketball" in their hands, they reply with "Yes, I do." or "Yes, I play basketball." before handing over their card.

You can also make it more complex depending on what your students are learning. For example, if you're learning about pronouns as well, you can have students pair up into teams while playing this version of Go Fish, and have one team ask one person from another team if their partner has a card. It would look something like this:

Lily and Daniel are in one team. James and Fiona are in another team. 

Lily, asking Fiona: Does he have a sharpener?

Fiona, after looking at James's cards: No, he doesn't have a sharpener. Go fish! 

There are varying levels of complexities that you can add to each of these basic games, but keep in mind that making a game more complex may not make it fun for students anymore, so you have to balance the fun with the learning to keep your students engaged. 

Using the same kind of game, with the same kind of rules, but changing out the cards and target language for different units or lessons, allows students to not need to do the double work of learning the rules and practicing what might be a new and potentially confusing target language skill at the same time (especially as it pertains to grammar).  

Textbooks, Workbooks, and Other Resources

Make sure you double-check the books and resources you use with your students to find out if there are any games included in them. For example, the workbook that we use with students has a Guess Who? style card game at the back of the book that they students can cut out and ask each other questions, eliminating each card until only one remains. This is a fun way of making them practice "Do you have..." and "Do you [verb]..." question structures.

Use the resources that you have to their full extent, to make sure that you're always giving students a range of different and fun options when learning new target language. After all, we learn best when we enjoy what we're learning.

As an aside, if there's only one kind of game with one kind of topic, see if there's a way for you to recreate the game using other topics or themes. For example, the students enjoyed the Guess Who? style game so much that I've made it a goal to try and create a similar one for at least a few more themes (for example, professions, or perhaps family members).  

Print and Play Board Games and Card Games

Now we come to something a little different. While the games that I've spoken about already are more DIY games using the usual suspects when its comes to the resources we tend to have in our classrooms, these games that are made by companies or individuals whose goals were not necessarily educational, bur which can still be used in your classroom to reinforce language learning and other target objects - including math. 

I've personally been on the lookout for print and play games, so that I can print out multiple copies, get them laminated, and have enough for all of my students to play. It also allows for the flexibility of preparing additional elements or adjusting certain parts of the games to be more level-appropriate and target-language focused for my students. 

My students are big football (soccer) fans, so I'm excited to get them to play True Soccer Hero with me, a game by Jason Sondoh that has them play a grid-like football match (and do some minor math in the process). This is a great way to introduce them to words like up/down/left/right, and phrases like "kick the ball" or "score a goal", among others. The objective for me is to have them use that language while they play, so I might tell them that when they score, they have to say "I score a goal!", and when they reach the ball, they have to say "I kick the ball [number] spaces." When they roll the dice, they can say, "I move [up/down/left/right] [number] spaces." This way, we focus on some sports language, keep things within the present tense framework to support the grammar objectives we're working on, and practice direction words.

Other games that look interesting for my Grades 1-4 include 1,000 Year Beard, which has addition and subtraction within the hundreds (great for Grade 3 and Grade 4 math reinforcement), Squirrel Squabble, which is a good way to practice some autumn-themed vocabulary with the students, and a few more like Washing Lines or Otto the Octopus. A couple of these games, as well as games like Bear Went Over the Mountain, may be good options for me to try with my KG students as well.

Board games can also be easy to make yourself. Anything from a simple chess board to an empty, printable game board can be transformed into a simple game designed specifically for a specific activity, without too much effort on your part. 

• Need tokens? Use your math manipulatives, or water bottle caps. You could even have the kids make their own with air-dry clay.
• Need images? Google is your friend! You could also scribble a quick doodle; kids aren't picky. Or, you can do what I did: have the students make part of it themselves. I had my students create their own vocabulary flashcards for one of the units with a card game in mind.
• Need a big game board? Print it in four parts and stick it all together. Or get a big piece of construction paper and some markers, and make it by hand.
• Need playtesters? Try it out on your household first, or let the students themselves be the playtesters for your game. Invite them to check it out at recess and see how smoothly it plays.

There's no issue that can't be solved with a simple and practical solution. And the great thing about working with children is that perfection isn't something they're necessarily bothered by. You can try your best, give them something fun, and they'll be delighted, even if your doodles aren't the most artistic or the most proportionate. Even better if they join in on the artsy fun by decorating the game board together.

Self-Made Games and Activities

I spoke about how we can turn our own resources into games for the students to play and enjoy - all the while, learning. A lot of the resources I use are resources that I downloaded from online, and a lot of them I made myself. But not only cards! 

One thing that I made early on in the year, and which we still use and probably will continue to use throughout the rest of the year, are Build-A-Sentence Mats that I had laminated. There are amazing resources like this that you can purchase, and they're probably extremely good quality, but given my budget, I made them by hand on A3 papers and laminated them. 

One mat is a simple Who-What-Where sentence-building mat, and another has the parts of speech. Students have different decks (color-coded for ease), and they can create silly sentences using these decks. Then, they draw them on their whiteboards or on pieces of paper, and this allows me to check if the students understood what the sentences said. 

Final Thoughts 

To wrap things up, there's a lot that we can do to create activities for students that they can find enjoyable, and which take away the pressure of learning. Placing kids in groups to play a game together, and getting them used to a set number of games with rules that are easy to understand, will help them reinforce learning independently and cooperatively, and will help you in the long run, too. 

A lot of the games that I've mentioned here may feel more receptive in nature, but there are a bunch of different ways that you can make the games focus on productive skills, too. For example, I might ask students to write down the sentence they create in the Who-What-Where sentence-building mat using their cards. I might ask them to keep a written log of game events once we start working on the past tense (ex: Jenny won the first round with 3 points. Max won the second round with 5 points.). If students are able to, I could ask them to write down what happened in their game after the game session is over, or I might ask them to write about whether or not they liked the game. For a more analytical take, I might ask them what they might want to change about the game to make it better, or if they found any problems in the game that need to be fixed, and how they might fix them.

There are a range of different activities you can attach to game sessions, and it's never a lost opportunity or wasted time - so long as you have your objectives set and have a solid idea for how you're going to go about getting to them.  

Board games and card games where students have to actually say a specific set of phrases are going to be my go-to for my students when I see that they're reluctant to speak in class, because of the success that I've seen already. They're also the perfect way to review and practice language skills taught in class, whether for ESL or ELA. They're adaptable, allow for flexibility, and - perhaps the most important thing of all, as this will free you up to help students who are struggling more in your class - they provide students with an activity they can do independently and/or cooperatively. You won't need to be present every single time they play it; introduce it to them, play a few sessions with them, and check in every now and again. 

When it comes to a game, kids will pick everything up really fast.