6 Simple Category Games

The Go-Round-The-Class Game

Pick a category, and simply tell students they must say one word in that category, quickly going round (and round) the class from student to student. Keep up the speed by counting down 3-2-1 with your fingers in front of them. They lose if they can’t say a word within a few seconds or if they repeat a word. If you want, you can also do it in alphabetical order.

Team Tennis

Same as above, except the students form two teams and say words in a category back and forth like a game of tennis until one repeats or runs out of ideas.  

Name Five Things

Simply write a category on the whiteboard and the first team to write five examples, spelled correctly, wins. Use harder categories for this game; animals, food etc is too easy when all they have to do is come up with five.

Three-Minute Speed-Write

Write a category on the whiteboard and with your mobile phone’s stopwatch count to three minutes. The team with the most words at the end, spelled correctly, wins.

Ascending Letter-Count

Draw a grid on the board – multiple columns with the first column named ‘number of letters’.  Under this write 3, 4 etc until 8, 9 or 10, depending on the student level. Write a category at the top of the next column along- e.g. animals. Students (in teams) must write a word in that group with the right number of letters e.g. ant(3), bird(4), whale(5), rabbit (6), penguin(7), elephant(8). Repeat with different categories, only writing in the category name at the start of each round. The winner is whoever finishes first or gets the furthest after two minutes.

20-Second Speed-Talk

Divide the students into teams and give each team 20 seconds to name 10 countries, 10 drinks, 10 vehicles, etc. When they complete that, move on to round 2: the same thing in 16 seconds (then 12,8,4 seconds for further rounds). Use a stopwatch. The game gets more and more urgent and exciting and you’ll be surprised how fast you can make students talk. Use easy categories; the point is just to see if the students can get the words out of their mouths fast enough. If they can’t complete the task the first time, then go again with a different category. Team A might advance to round 2 while Team B has to repeat round 1 but then Team B might catch up later on. Keep track of all this on the board. If they’re still having trouble or if they’re young kids, reduce it to 8 or 6 or 5 words in the allotted time.