Describe the word to your team, but the obvious words are banned. Taking away hospital, sick and medicine is what turns a one-word answer into a real explanation. Run it on the whiteboard with a timer, or print the deck as cut-out cards.
One child gets a word to describe to their team, along with a short list of the most obvious words they are not allowed to say. Describing doctor without hospital, sick or medicine forces a longer, harder, more interesting explanation.
Without them a child says the one obvious synonym and stops. Taking those words away is what pushes them into full sentences, relative clauses and circumlocution — it is a person who helps you when you are not well — which is exactly the strategy a language learner needs when they hit a word they do not know.
Split into two to four teams and put a timer on the board. One child faces away from the screen while their team describes; every word guessed is a point, and passes are free. A sixty-second round per team keeps a whole class going for about ten minutes.
Year 3 to Year 6 (US grades 3–6) works best, because the banned words only bite once a child has enough vocabulary to go round them. With younger children or beginners, turn the picture on so the describer can see what they are describing and the reading is not the obstacle.
It is one of the better revision activities there is. Generate the cards on the Romans, the digestive system or the water cycle and children have to define subject words in their own words under time pressure — which is a harder test of whether they understand them than a definition matching exercise.
From the classroom
The rule everyone forgets to set is what happens when someone says a banned word. Left unsaid, the listening team spends the round arguing rather than listening. Decide before you start — the usual version is the card is lost and you move on — and give the other team the job of spotting it. That way both teams are working during every round, which is the difference between this filling ten minutes and it filling ten minutes usefully. Keep rounds to sixty seconds even when they beg for longer; the pressure is doing the work, and a ninety-second round just gets slower.
Yes. Print the deck as A4 cut-out cards, fifteen to a page, each with the word, the banned list and the picture if you turned pictures on. A printed deck means a group can play at a table without the whiteboard, which makes it a good carousel station.
Give the class a stem to fall back on — it is a thing you use for…, it is a place where…, it is a person who… — and put it on the board. Almost every stuck describer is stuck on how to start, not on what the word means, and a stem gets them moving.
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| Use it for | How | How long |
|---|---|---|
| Topic vocabulary revision | Generate cards on the unit | 10 minutes |
| Speaking under pressure | 60-second rounds, two teams | 10 minutes |
| A table group activity | Printed cut-out deck | 15 minutes |
| Beginners in English | Pictures on, 90 seconds, no score | 10 minutes |
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Describe & Draw · Odd One Out · Find Someone Who… — or see all nine in ESL & Oracy.
Written by a practising primary school teacher, who built Sage Teachers to use in their own classroom. Every activity here is free to try with no sign-up.