Description
The students make groups. Each group gets a deck of cards, and each student is dealt the same number of cards. Remaining cards are left in a deck in the middle. If a student has a pair of the same card, they can take it out of their hand and put it in a separate discard pile.
The player asks any other student in their group if they have a certain card, using the target English. If the student they asked doesn’t have the card, they answer ‘no’ and player must pick up an extra card from the middle deck. If the middle deck is empty, the discard pile is shuffled and used. If that student does have the card, they answer ‘yes’, and give that card to the player. When a player has a matching pair of cards, they can discard it.
The goal is to be the first player with no cards remaining in their hand.
Notes
- It is best that each student starts with an odd number of cards, so no one can instantly win by making pairs.
- Once a student wins, it is recommended that the game is reset and the students start again. If the remaining students play until everyone has no cards left, those first few who finish will be left out for quite a while.
- The player can either freely ask any student they like for cards, or they always ask the student next to them in a circle. The former is more difficult to demonstrate but allows for more interesting strategy, the latter is simpler but may make the game less interesting.
- This game generally requires a lot of cards! Assuming an average class of around 30 students split into 6 groups of 5 students, at minimum you would need around 108 cards (3 starting cards for each student plus 3 in the middle deck). 5 starting cards with 5 in the middle deck would need 180 cards total.
