Write, Fold, Pass, Draw, Fold, Pass, Repeat

I was trying to describe this great EFL activity to a friend the other day over the phone and decided I would just make a blog so I could include pictures (my very classy high quality made via paint pictures, but still).

This is a fun review activity for vocabulary words, or just when you need your students to practice forming complete sentences. Best of all it requires no preparation.

It is usually easiest to play this game in a circle, but if you don't want to move people that's fine, just be ready for confusion when you have people passing the papers around and be clear on who passes it where.


First everyone gets a piece of paper and at the top they write a simple sentence. The cat chased the dog, The man is standing on the moon, She loves the man...anything(well almost anything). 

I tell my students they have to use an active verb (not I am tall, or he is pretty) because it makes the game more fun.


Then they pass the paper to their right and the next person draws a quick (I have a timer and the students get a minute) picture of the sentence.

When the time is up have the students fold the top of the paper so that you can no longer see the sentence. In this case you fold on the imaginary blue line.

Now you should have a sheet of paper with a fold where you can just see the drawing.

The students take this and pass it to their right again. Now they have to write a sentence that matches the picture.

When I play this with my students they are NOT allowed to  ask the person, "What is that?" or get any help because it makes the sentences more interesting.

Once they finish the sentence they need to fold on the imaginary blue line so that the picture isn't visible and pass it to the person on their right.

This person should just see the sentence.  They need to draw a picture that shows what the sentence is doing. When they finish they fold and pass it to the right.


You can keep going until a student runs out of space, a paper has circled the whole class, or make it a timed activity. At the end I have my students unfold the paper and compare the first and final sentence. Then they try to find the person that started it.

I am hesitant to call this a game since there's no competition, no winners, and no losers, but the students have SO much fun with it I think you can!

So you could start this by giving everyone a different vocabulary word and having them make the sentence, OR you could have them pick whichever word they want.

Have you used this in class? How did you go? Did you adapt it? Let us know!