Hair Characteristics Cards (Deduction Game)

Overview

Hair Characteristics Cards is a speaking activity that offers students a fun way to learn how to describe different hairstyles. With this game, students can become adept at identifying specific hair characteristics and using appropriate adjectives to describe those characteristics.

This is a deduction card game with a different combination of hairstyle characteristics on each card. Players need to use their verbal skills to deduce which of the character on the cards laid out in front of them matches the character on the "secret card" in their activity partner's possession, by using the sentence structure "Is your hair _________________?"

Learners will be able to play this game after memorizing as few as 12 vocabulary words.

Currently, there are 2 sets of cards are available for this game. Set A contains 18 cards featuring hairstyles that can all be differentiated from each other based on hair color and length alone. Set B contains an additional 9 add-on cards that can used along with the cards in Set A. The additional inclusion of these 9 cards makes it necessary to use hair-type (straight, wavy, and curly) to differentiate between the different hairstyles depicted in the complete collection of 27 cards.

How To Play

Groups: This game is best played in pairs of two participants. One participant in each group will be the asker and the other will be the answerer. The answerer should pretend that they are the character depicted on the card so that they can have the beneficial learning experience of practicing verbal answers as if they are different people with different hairstyles each time they play a round of the game.

Materials: Two identical sets of 18 Hair Characteristics Cards are needed for each pair of two participants. This means two sets of Set A. To add extra complexity, the 9 cards in Set B can be added to the each set of Set A so that learners can learn to differentiate hairstyles based on whether they are curly, straight, or wavy.

Time / Game Round: 1-3 minutes

• The asker should lay out one set of game cards in front of them and the answerer should draw one "secret card" from an identical set of cards. The "secret card" will therefore match one of the 18 (or 27) cards laid out in front of the asker.
  
  
• The answerer can look at the "secret card," but they aren't allowed to show it to the asker. The asker can only learn what is included in the restaurant order on the "secret card" by asking verbal questions.
  
  
• The asker's GOAL is to narrow down which of the 18 (or 27) cards in front of them matches the "secret card" possessed by the answerer.
  
  The asker treats the answerer as the character named on the answerer's card. The answerer will answer the asker's questions as if he or she is the actual character on the card.
  
  To collect information, the asker can use the sentence pattern "Is your hair _________________?" and systematically insert different adjectives into the blank in the sentence pattern.
  
  
• Based on the answerer's 'yes/no' answers, the asker can "eliminate" any cards that logically can't match the "secret card" held by the answerer. The best way to "eliminate" the non-matching cards, is to flip them over face-down. Then the asker can continue to ask more questions to further narrow down the remaining "face-up cards."
  
  
• Each round of the game continues until the asker has narrowed down the cards in front of them to just one card. They can then ask the answerer, "Is this you?" while showing the last remaining card to the answerer.

For more detailed instructions for how to print, prepare, and introduce card-based deduction games like this one, click the blue button below.