What/Who am I game cards
Here are 45 free printable who am I game cards for a fun classroom activity. This is a useful speaking game that will help ESL learners with their vocabulary, pronunciation and overall speaking confidence.
This guessing game is actually a version of a popular board game (with many names) that is sold all over the world and played by families and friends at parties. There is no reason why you can’t use it at home for your own enjoyment as well!
The printable who am I game cards have photographs of famous people, places, objects, animals, and fruit and vegetables. The vocabulary is aimed at intermediate level learners and above. There are though, some easy cards included here that you can use for lower levels.
Once you understand the game you can easily make your own game cards. Pictures are not required, you can simply just write the words you want to use/revise in your class.
Who am I game instructions
The basic game concept is that each player has a word and must ask questions to find out what their word is. They are not allowed to look at their card or ask somebody”what is it?”.
To find out what their word is, students must ask the other players yes or no questions. For beginners, you can scrap this rule and let them ask any kinds of questions they like (except spelling etc).
To start the game each person must have a card stuck to their forehead. You can do this with masking tape. Another option is to make paper headbands. If you cut sheets of A4 paper into strips and join them with sticky tape, you can prepare plenty of headbands in 5 minutes. You can then stick the who am I game cards to the headbands or attach them with a paper clip.
Another option is to get the players to just hold the cards on their foreheads. The problem with this method is that students may get tired of doing this and are more likely to cheat and look at their cards.
Next, have your class sit in a circle (for large classes you will need more than 1 circle). Now students can begin asking questions to deduce what their word is. It works well if you let each student ask only one question then let the next player have a turn.
Further thoughts on using the who am I game cards
1 – When playing the game you might want to set a time limit. You can also set a question limit for each player.
2 – For a walk and talk activity or icebreaker, forget sitting in circles and let the students walk around the class. They can ask 1 question per student so that they mingle properly and everyone communicates with each other.
Playing the game this way allows you to attach the game cards to the back of student’s shirts.
3 – If you make your own cards, consider writing the words on Post-it/Sticky Notes that can easily be stuck to your student’s foreheads.
4 – Make sure to demonstrate what kinds of questions they should ask before playing. To begin with, you want to ask broad sweeping questions to find out the word category. Questions like – Am I a person? Am I a living thing? Do I make noise? and so on.
5 – If you want to make the game easier, just use 1 category. This way everybody will be a different famous person, animal, fruit or whatever category you choose for the game.
