A brilliant word guessing game perfect for building vocabulary!
Game Type: Literacy, Study Break, Tuning In
Recommended Ages: 6+
Number Of Players: Two players
Equipment Required: Stopwatch, word cards (There is a link below to printable word cards to get you started. Just cut them out and you are ready to play)
Where To Play: Indoors
Duration: 5-10 minutes
Objective
For students to guess and explain as many words as possible in one minute.
How To Play
Step One: Choose two students to stand up and face each other.
Step Two: Give one student fifteen word cards. This student is the ‘hinter’.
Step Three: The other student is the ‘guesser’. Neither student may see the cards until you say ‘go’.
Step Four: On ‘go’, the hinter looks at the first word card in their stack. They must describe this word to the guesser without using the actual word. The guesser must guess what the word is. For example, if the word is ‘tree’ the hinter may say ‘something tall and green and covered in leaves’.
Step Five: Once the guesser has guessed correctly, the hinter moves onto the next word. Teams may ‘pass’ and go onto the next word if they are struggling by putting it at the bottom of their stack and coming back to it if they have time. Tip: This is a great way to find out what vocabulary your students are struggling with
Step Six: The team has one minute to guess as many words as possible. When time is up, say ‘stop’ and count the total number of correct guesses. That is their score.
Step Seven: It is great to give at least three teams a chance to play. After we have played a few times, my students often like to create their own word cards which is just brilliant.
Game Note
Pyramid is particularly good for introducing or reviewing vocabulary specific to a topic of study, for example mini-beasts, oceans and space.
