Top Trumps London (Young learners)
London is one of the world’s most vibrant cities. Teach your young learners all about it with these fun card games and lesson plans by Colm Boyd, designed to build both speaking and vocabulary skills.
Inside Top Trumps London
Top Trumps London: Playing cards
Level: Elementary, Pre-intermediate, Intermediate, Upper intermediate, Advanced Type: Game, General lesson plan
A full set of 30 Top Trumps London cards in our exclusive cut-out-and-keep format. Suitable for elementary to advanced level students, this game offers great ideas for vocabulary, speaking and pronunciation lessons.
Top Trumps London: How to play
Author: Colm Boyd Level: Elementary, Pre-intermediate, Intermediate, Upper intermediate, Advanced Type: Game, General lesson plan
Teach your students how to play the game in class with this handy guide to Top Trumps London.
Top Trumps London: Young Learners intermediate
Author: Colm Boyd Level: Intermediate Type: Game, General lesson plan
In this young learners lesson, students do a wordsearch, learn vocabulary related to describing buildings and play a city planning game.
Top Trumps London: Young Learners advanced
Author: Colm Boyd Level: Advanced Type: Game, General lesson plan
Learn about London!
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Readers' comments (2)
Web Editor | Mon, 14 Aug 2017 10:51 am
Hi there,
Thanks very much for leaving your experience of playing with the Top Trumps cards. Yes, it's true that sometimes you can get a bit stuck if you can't seem to get rid of a particular card. I think it would make a difference if the winner starts each round as it should mix things up a bit but you're right, you can find yourself in a situation where no one seems to be able to win. Your suggestion of saying the winner is the person with the most cards makes sense to me. You could use a timer next time so that the winner is either the person who wins all the cards or the person left with most cards at the end of the time limit.
I'd also suggest trying some of the lessons that use the cards in a different way i.e not just the original game.
I hope that helps and I hope it works out better for you the next time round :-)
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Anonymous | Sat, 12 Aug 2017 1:36 am
I decided to give this activity a go as I needed some kind of game to break the routine, and also because we had previously discussed sights around London in class.
I tried to do the 'easy version' (without added grammar). I'm saddened to report that students didn't seem to be motivated. They seemed discouraged by the fact that they kept getting the same cards over and over.
There was this student, for example, who kept playing the same card, using the same category. It was Wembly Stadium, year established 2007. It became kind of annoying because that card never changed hands, and the student wouldn't change categories.
Even though I read the instructions before playing, I completely overlooked the one that says the winner of each round should start the next one. I'm not sure if this would have made a big difference, but my students didn't seem to make any headway towards winning. Eventually, we just had to call it quits and decide the winner was the person with the most cards.
I'm sorry for the long rant, but I had been kind of excited to use this activity, hoping that students would be engaged. I still believe this game is interesting, and it is visually very attractive. I plan on using it again with a different class. Next time we'll try modifying comparatives and superlatives, and I'll make sure the winner of each round starts the next one (hopefully, this will make someone actually win).
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