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The Guess Who board game can be played with younger and older students. You can also adjust the difficulty of the game by making the descriptive questions more challenging.
Read below for more information about how to play the game in class.
Student Level: Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced
Guess Who ESL Game Preparation:
To prepare the ESL Guess Who Game, you should browse online to find templates of the photos. Do a Google search for “Guess Who game templates” and you will see several results pop up.
Choose one of the classic picture grids or customize one yourself. For instance, your could copy/paste photos of celebrities in a grid and print it out.
If your students are equipped with smartphones or tablets, you could play the game digitally and save on paper.
Guess Who ESL Game Guidelines:
Before the students play the game, make sure to model the task for them first.
Bring up the picture grid on the projector or on the class screen so everyone can see.
Next, holding a copy of the photo grid in your hands, tell the students that you have selected one of the people’s photos from the grid. Their task is to ask you “Yes” or “No” questions to find out which person’s photo you are thinking of.
For instance, they could ask the following types questions:
“Is it a man or a woman?”
“Does he have black hair?”
“Does he have a moustache?”
“Is he wearing a jacket?”
“Are his eyes blue?
After asking you several questions, they should narrow down the photos to only a few specific ones. Eventually, someone will guess the correct photo that you are thinking about.
Now that they have a better understanding of how to play, put the students in pairs.
Pairs are ideal, but groups work well too if you have a larger class.
Give the students prints of the photo grid (or send them the digital version).
Finally, tell them to perform the same task. The students can change roles and take turns answering/asking the questions. Again, remind them to ask close-ended questions.
By the end of the Guess Who ESL Game, you can review some of the descriptive vocabulary and go over any difficulties that students had.
Follow-Up ESL Activities:
If time permits, do an extension of the activity and students can practice writing out the questions on paper.
To encourage more discussion, check out the Have You Ever ESL Game or the Prepositions ESL Game.
More ESL Board Games for Kids and Adults:
- Blankety Blank
- Cards Against Humanity
- King’s Cup
- Box of Lies
- Mad Libs
- Taboo
- Alibi
- Bingo
- The Price is Right
- Apples to Apples
- Jeopardy
- Balderdash
- Monopoly
- Battleships
- Charades
- Pictionary
- Wheel of Fortune
View the ESL board games archive.