Rock Scissor Paper Game
Are you looking for some fun ESL activities and games to incorporate into your classes? Then you’ve come to the right place! I’m going to give you the fun-down on one of my favourite review activities that works equally well for kids or adults.
Rocks-Scissor-Paper is ideal to review key material right before a test. Plus, it’s fun and the students love it!
More Details about this Rocks-Scissor-Paper Activity
Skills: Reading/ Speaking/ Listening
Time: 20 minutes
Level: Beginner-Intermediate
Age: Children, Teens or Adults
Materials Required: Question/Answer papers (~5/student)
Let’s get to it with the Rock Scissor Paper review game for ESL or EFL students. You can review a number of different grammar points and vocabulary like before a midterm or final exam. Or, you may consider using it to review a specific grammar point like uncountable and countable nouns.
What you Need To Do for this ESL Review Activity
Make up strips of paper with questions and answers (on separate papers). I usually do this by making up a grid, about 20 x 2. Then, write the corresponding questions/answer. Print out 1-5 copies (depending on the size of your class), cut the pieces out, and put them into a big envelope.
A quick tip: you can reusable these papers for other classes if you teach the same thing multiple times. Just get the papers back from the students at the end of the activity.
In class, give each student 5 random papers, a mix of both questions and answers.
They have to walk around the class finding their “match.” They can do this by talking quietly with each other or reading the papers of the other person.
Once they find a match, they can rock scissor paper and the winner takes both papers. The students with the most points at the end of the allotted time are the winners. 2 papers (question/answer) counts as 1 point.
Make sure you double-check that the question/answer matches because sometimes students make mistakes. Emphasize to students that you will be checking their matches so they will try harder to make a correct match and not just randomly pair them up.
Of course, you can make things a little bit more interesting by offering a small prize of some sort to 2-3 winners in the class. This gives many otherwise kind of apathetic students a reason to participate! Hey, whatever it takes, right?
This is the perfect game to do for review in basic conversation classes before the midterm or final exam. Another thing I love about it is that it can appeal to many different modes of learning within a single activity.
Teaching Tips for Rock-Scissor-Paper
This game has the potential to become a little bit wild if you don’t set up some ground rules at the start! Picture 20 students running around the classroom screaming in their native language. It’s not ideal.
Here’s how you can avoid this:
- Make a rule about no shouting. Each student must talk 1-1 with another student (no groups or teams). If anyone is not following this rule, they will have to sit down until the activity is finished.
- It’s best to make matches that are not too similar to each other. They should be quite obvious because if not, you’ll end up with all sorts of incorrect pairings at the end of the game (and students won’t be able to find the correct matches because of this).
- At the end of the game, you can review some of the most important questions/answers that you want to highlight before your test, or that needs to be emphasized before moving on to new material.
ESL Rock Scissor Paper Game
Even More ESL Review Activities!
Did you like rock scissors paper for English classes? Yes? Thought so!
Then you’re going to love this book over on Amazon, 39 ESL Review Activities for Teenagers and Adults. This activity is straight from there, and you can find 38 more just like it.
The book is available in both digital and print formats, so keep a copy on the bookshelf in your office as a handy reference guide. Or, take the digital version with you to your favourite coffee shop for lesson planning on the go. It really is that easy to have better English classes.
Check out the book for yourself here:
- Bolen, Jackie (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 77 Pages - 06/10/2016 (Publication Date) - CreateSpace Independent...
Need Another ESL Review Activity?
If you’d like some more ideas for review games and activities for your classes, then check out this short video below about using board games in your classes.
Many of the teacher’s resource books include them, or it’s very easy to make your own. They’re fun, students love them and they also make an excellent review activity before a test. Along with rocks-scissors-paper, I’ll often do a board game to review before a test.
Have your Say about ESL Rocks-Scissor-Paper!
What are your thoughts about this fun ESL review game? Or, do you have another go-to game or activity that you like to use with your students? If you are looking for fun questions to ask, check out the would you rather questions for kids. Leave a comment below and let us know what you think. We’d love to hear from you.
Also be sure to give this article a share on Twitter, Pinterest, or Facebook. It’ll help other busy teachers, like yourself find this useful teaching resource.
Last update on 2025-06-02 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API
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