How to Use Our Flashcards

Do you use our Flashcards feature to introduce and reinforce vocabulary with your students?

From Food & Drink to In & At School, we have thousands of flashcards so you can easily teach and review vocabulary and grammar points with your students. Plus, with the recent improvements our Product team has made to our flashcard tools, there’s never been a better time to start using the feature.

How to Browse & Search for Flashcards

On the left-hand side of the Flashcards page, you'll see our flashcards are sorted into sections. These flashcard sections are grouped around a particular theme such as Letters & Numbers, Colors & Shapes, Grammar & Punctuation, and so on.

Each flashcard section includes categories, which are located to the right of the page along the top. These flashcard categories are flashcards that are further grouped together and narrower in focus within that section.

For example, under the Letters & Numbers flashcard section, you'll find flashcard categories like Capital Letters, Lowercase Letters, Letters, Phonics, IPA Phonetic Symbols, and Numbers.

Easily find the flashcards you're looking for by clicking on the different sections and categories.

If there's a specific flashcard you're searching for, type it into the search bar available at the top of the page.

How to Build & Save Custom Flashcard Sets

To build a custom set, you can select flashcards one at a time or select an entire flashcard category.

The flashcards you select will appear in a box along the bottom of the page. From here, you can click Manage to rename, reorder, and remove the flashcards you’ve selected. You can also print your selected flashcards if you're planning to use them in person with your students.

To save your selection of flashcards, click Save to Set. In the box that appears, you can choose to save your selected flashcards to an existing or new set.

How to Use the Flashcard Player

Whether you're teaching in class with a projector or sharing your screen online, you can present your custom flashcard sets to your students in real time with our Flashcard Player.

Go to your saved flashcard sets and click on the three dots on the right side of the page to launch the Flashcard Player. From here, you can also edit, delete, or print the flashcard set. Additionally, you can share your flashcard set with your students. If they have an ESL Library account, they can then view your customized set when they sign in.

Once you've launched the Flashcard Player, you can choose from the menu to the left whether you want to display the image by itself, the image and the text, or just the text.

To learn more about how to use our flashcard tools, visit our Help Docs or sign up to attend a Flashcard Workshop.

How to Use Flashcards in the Classroom

Did you know you can print out our flashcards and use them to play classroom games and activities? Here are a few of our favorite games to try with your class.

Memory

1. Divide your students into small groups.
2. For every small group, print out one set of flashcards with just the images and the matching set of flashcards with just the text. Then, place the flashcards upside down in a grid. There will be one grid for the flashcards with images and one grid for the flashcards with text.
3. Each student in the group takes a turn flipping over a flashcard from each grid. If the flashcard with the word and the flashcard with the image match, the student can keep the pair and take another turn. If the flashcards don’t match, the student flips the flashcards facedown again and lets the next student take their turn.

The game ends when all the flashcards have been matched. The student with the most pairs wins!

Pictionary

1. Print out flashcards with only the text on them.
2. Split the class into two teams.
3. A student from one of the teams will pick one of the flashcards and draw it on the board at the front of the class. Their team then has 30 seconds to guess what the picture is. If they guess correctly, that team gets a point.
4. The next team takes a turn and so on.

The team with the most points wins!

Spelling Bee

1. Print out our flashcards with only the images on them, and divide the class into two groups.
2. Show a flashcard to a student from one of the groups. If they know the word and are able to spell it, their team gets a point.
3. Do the same with a student from the other team and so on.

The team with the most points wins! This activity can also be used to practice pronunciation.

For more flashcard games and activities, check out our blog post on 10 Ways to Use Flashcards in Class.

How do you use our flashcards in your classroom? Let us know in the comments below!