Spot the Difference

All English teachers reading this right now would have played a Spot the Difference game, probably on a rainy Sunday afternoon or a long car journey somewhere as a kid, you know, where you look closely at two similar pictures, trying to find six small differences. Well actually, playing Spot the Difference in your ESL classroom is an excellent activity to practice language!

Before class, go online and look for simple Spot the Difference puzzles. Try to find a Spot the Difference puzzle which isn't too complex and ones where your students could describe to you what they can see in the picture in English without searching for too much new language. See the example below:

Activity 1: The teacher has one copy of Picture A. Put your class into small teams and have them sitting in groups. Hand each group one copy of Picture B. Have each team take turns to ask a question to try to find differences. For example, "Where is the cat?", "What is the boy doing?", "Is the TV on?", etc. Each group takes turns to ask a question until all differences have been found. The team with the most points wins.

Activity 2: The teacher divides the class into pairs. One student gets Picture A and the other student gets Picture B. Students take it in turns to ask each other questions to Spot the Differences. To stop cheating, move their chairs so they are facing each other with a gap in between.