Free Health And Sickness Flashcards

Use these free health and sickness flashcards to teach ESL students vocabulary about common illnesses and symptoms. Perfect for beginner English learners, this printable set includes clear and simple visuals to help students learn words like headache, fever, cough, and more.

About These Health And Sickness Flashcards

This free set includes 8 health and sickness flashcards in both large and small formats. The large cards are ideal for presenting new vocabulary at the front of class, while the small cards are great for student activities like matching, memory games, or bingo. Vocabulary includes: headache, stomachache, cold, fever, cough, toothache, rash, and sore throat.

Ways to Use These Flashcards

These health and sickness flashcards are great for lessons practicing simple dialogues like “What’s wrong?”, “I have a fever.”, “I have a cold.”, or “I have a sore throat.” They’re especially useful for helping beginner ESL students express how they feel when they’re unwell.

Here are two fun classroom activities you can try:

• Act It Out Game (Whole Class)
  Use the large flashcards and shuffle them face down. Choose one at random, but don’t show it to the class. Instead, act out the sickness on the card—hold your stomach and groan for stomachache, or wipe your forehead and pretend to shiver for fever. Students try to guess what’s wrong using the target language. This activity encourages students to recall the new vocabulary through observation and helps reinforce the words they just learned.
• Find Your Match (Speaking Game)
  Give each student one of the small flashcards. Students walk around the room asking each other, “What’s wrong?” and answering based on the picture on their card. If both students have the same illness, they sit down together. If not, they swap cards and find a new partner. This simple game gets students speaking and using the vocabulary repeatedly in a fun and communicative way.

Other Resources for Teaching Sickness/Health Vocabulary

Use this Sickness and Health PowerPoint Lesson to introduce key vocabulary and model useful expressions like “I have a headache” or “I feel sick.” Once students are familiar with the new words, try these Sickness and Health Vocabulary Exercises to help reinforce and review the target language through engaging practice activities.