Happy Families

by Katie Thwaites,
Teacher of Modern Foreign Languages

A take on the classic card game, ‘Happy Families’ is a group activity that can be adapted for any subject. Preparation may take a little longer than with other activities but once you have created your own basic template, it can be used to consolidate knowledge on any topic.

 

In French, my focus was families of verbs. Working in groups of four, each student was dealt seven cards. The aim of the game is to collect as many ‘families’ as possible, so in this case, if a student had a card with a particular verb written in the present tense, they were also expected to collect conjugations in the past and future tenses. Following a clockwise motion, students had to ask their team mates for a specific card to complete their ‘families’. If nobody had that card, students could take one of the spares from the pile. The winner of the game is the student with the most ‘families’ after having dealt all of the cards.

 

Students loved the competitive element and they revised a huge amount of grammar in a relatively short period of time.