Published 2 min read
Flashcards are the best value teaching aid in an English classroom, because one set will run a dozen different games. A set from a shop costs hundreds of baht and rarely matches the topic you're actually teaching. The good news: cards you make yourself work just as well, and getting the children to help make them is a learning activity in its own right.
A Recipe for Cards That Survive a Whole Class
- Size: a quarter of an A4 sheet. Big enough for the back row to see when you hold it up, small enough for a child to hold in one hand.
- Faces: picture on one side, word on the other. Never put both on the same face, or the children will read the word and translate it in their heads instead of forming the picture.
- Durability: wrap each card in cheap clear tape. That's enough to last a term, even after passing through the hands of a whole Grade 1 class.
- Very willing free labour: at the end of a topic, have every child draw one card. They revise the words, you end up with a fresh set, and children are unusually fond of the card they drew themselves.
6 Games from a Single Set of Cards
- Quick flash: show a card for half a second, then turn it face down. Whoever catches it and answers first takes the point.
- What is missing: lay out six cards, have the children close their eyes, remove one, and see who can name the card that's gone.
- Memory: turn the picture cards and the word cards face down, then flip them two at a time hunting for matching pairs.
- Card on the forehead: a child holds a card against their forehead without seeing it and asks the class questions like Is it an animal? until they guess right.
- Speed sentences: hand out the whole pile of word cards and race to arrange them into the sentence you say aloud.
- Card hunt: hide the cards around the room before the lesson. Children find them and trade each one for a point by reading the word correctly.