Drilling activities with flashcards

Name of game

Procedure

Materials

Missing flashcards

Place cards with target vocabulary on the table in lines and rows. Use a pencil / a pointer to drill the words. Remove one of the cards and continue drilling with naming the missing flashcard. Continue removing flashcards, until you drill with no flashcards at all.

Set of target vocabulary cards

+ a pointer / a pencil / a pen

Fast flashcards

Take a set of target vocabulary flashcards. Start showing the cards. But you show them very fast. Show a card fast and elicit the word from SS.

Set of target vocabulary cards

What’s missing? game

Place a set of target vocabulary cards chaotically on the table. Ask SS to remember the cards. When they are ready, ask them to close their eyes and remove a random flashcard. Then they open their eyes and you ask “What is missing?”, and elicit the missing flashcard from SS.

Set of target vocabulary cards

Chinese whispers

Divide SS into 2 teams and arrange them into 2 lines. Whisper a word from the target vocabulary to the last SS in each lines. Then they continue whispering it.

Children stand in two lines facing the blackboard. Secretly show the last child standing in each line a flashcard. This child then whispers the name of this flashcard to next child and so on up the line. The child at the front runs to the blackboard and draws or writes the word. They then go to the back of the line. Repeat the procedure several times.

Variation of the game – give each line a flashcard and ask them to pass the flashcard in a funny way (above the head, between the legs, with right hand and so on). When a student gets a flashcard, he / she names it and then passes it to the next one in the line.

Set of target vocabulary cards