Guess The Category Game

This free ESL classroom activity is a fun guessing game that challenges students to find the hidden words and then figure out the category they belong to. It works especially well as a quick brain break activity or as a warm-up in lessons, since it uses simple vocabulary topics that beginner learners are already familiar with.

How to Play This Guess The Category Game

The game has 10 rounds in total. In each round, students see five words with some letters missing, and the missing letters are revealed slowly, one by one. The aim is to guess the words before they are completely revealed and figure out the category they belong to. For example, if the words are shirt, sweater, hat, coat, and dress, the correct category would be clothes.

The categories in this game come from common beginner ESL topics such as colors, countries, food, clothes, animals, jobs, sports, family, and body parts, making it both accessible for beginners and a fun way to review vocabulary.

Extension Idea

To make the activity more interactive, put students in pairs or small groups and give each team a whiteboard (or a piece of paper). Play the video as usual, but this time the first team to guess the category correctly scores a point.

After that, challenge all teams to write down as many extra words from the same category as they can. Award one point for each correct word. This variation keeps the whole class engaged, adds a fun, competitive element, and gives students more practice recalling and using vocabulary within the same topic.