A fun and exciting game for younger ESL students. This can also work well with 1-1 teaching. This game can be played with either simple or advanced rules.

Materials needed: Flashcards.

How to Play (simple): Tell the students the word they are looking to slap. Have the pile of Flashcards upside-down and flip over each card one-by-one. When the students see the card that matches the word they must slap it and say the word. The student whose hand slapped the card first is the winner and gets to keep the card. The student (or team) with the most flashcards is the winner.

Variations:
1) Make it a team game.
2) If a student slaps the wrong card, then they are out the that round.
3) Encourage full form answers. eg instead of "dog" get students to say "It's a dog".

Click the next button for an advanced version of the game.

How to play (advanced): For advanced play you need multiple copies of each flashcard. Deal out flashcards evenly to students. Sitting in a circle, students take turns fliping over their cards onto the pile. Be sure that all students see the card at the same time. ie the student with the card can't look at it before they put it on the pile. When the card flipped over is the same as the card flipped over in the last turn then the students can slap the pile of cards. The student to slap the pile first gets all the cards in the pile. The aim of the game is to have all the cards (or at least the most amount of cards at the end of a number of turns).

Variations:
1) Make it turn limited. eg SLAP can only happen 5 times, after that the winner is the student with the most cards.
2) Make it a team game.
3) After the students have placed the cards on the pile they have to say the language. eg "It's a dog".
4) Have sentences on the cards in either Past, Present or Future tense. When two sentences in the same tense are placed down, in a row, then the students can slap the pile.

Enjoy!