Activity

Around the Town Cards

This is a fairly versatile and beautiful deck of cards that is easily adaptable to a fair number of traditional card games for English lessons. From games like SNAP! and Speed (Spit) to GoFish!

  • Places around the town (More themes are available) -52-cards (no jokers or face cards) -13 vocabulary words

1 - house
2 - school
3 - park
4 - library
5 - museum
6 - hospital
7 - bus stop
8 - station
9 - department store
10 - post office
11 - aquarium
12 - amusement park
13 - convenience store

There are 4 suites (hearts, clubs, spades, diamonds)

Each suite has a corresponding verb/helping verb (have, like, go, be). You can use these (or not) in your games--depending on the target language you're practicing and what your students have already had exposure to.

Recommended use:
These cards can either be used for warm-up activities or practice activities--after presenting the vocabulary/grammar point(s).

  1. Make sure students already understand the grammar/vocabulary (listed above) that they will be using these cards to practice with.
  2. Give them a minute or two to look through the deck to see all of the beautiful and eye catching images--and think about what they are in English.
  3. Play a simple or slow paced or turn based card game that they can first use to practice the core vocabulary.
  4. If you're practicing a grammar point, have them say that grammar point with the picture on the card in the 2nd or 3rd round of the game.
  5. Walk around and help students with pronunciation and mistakes.
  6. At the end of the game, ask who the winners are and congratulate them while giving positive feedback to the class.
  7. Have the groups count 52 cards and return the decks.
Files:
Medium files (requires an account to download) -
  • Places-Clubs-PNP.pdf (3.71 MB)
  • Places-Diamonds-PNP.pdf (3.71 MB)
  • Places-Hearts-PNP.pdf (3.74 MB)
  • Places-Spades-PNP.pdf (3.7 MB)
  • 23
    Submitted by Muki0101 June 13, 2023 Estimated time: It takes about 20-minutes to print and cut a single deck; play-time varies depending on the card game you choose to adapt (5~10 minutes max recommended)!
    1. Muki0101 June 13, 2023

      I've used these cards--along with other similar cards--with classes split into groups of 4-6 players as well as with smaller special needs classes. I find that the students really enjoy playing games like Speed, GoFish (for closed-ended questions and answers) and SNAP (which is really good for practicing new vocabulary or grammar). I'll introduce these and other card games and how I've adapted them in other posts! Please let me know how it goes!

    2. kusobaba June 14, 2023

      Nice looking cards. Thanks for sharing!

    3. Ejemy May 14, 2024

      Great idea. But card design could use work. Did you use AI to make these? Some of the pictures are hard to make out and/or make no sense.

    4. samalama September 17, 2024

      Nice cards but these are clearly AI. The pictures are difficult to make out.

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