Creating a 'dobble' style vocab game

I enjoy the game ‘dobble’ and I’m sure many of your students do too! Here’s how to turn it into a useful way to practice vocab recall in the classroom. 

I play this as a way for students to practice remembering and saying vocab quickly, since it is a very fast game. They also have the benefit of multiple repetitions of key vocab.


How to play

The aim is for players to find the single matching symbol between two cards. Start by dealing all the cards equally amongst players face down. There should be one card left face up in the middle of all the players. All the players flip over their top card simultaneously, and they need to find the symbol that matches between their card and the centre card. The first person to say the symbol puts the card onto the center card, and the player who gets rid of all of their cards first is the winner. 

There are many other variations of play, and I recommend this for groups of between three and five students. Students will get through a game quickly, so I suggest nominating a student in charge per group, who will redistribute the cards after each game to get it going again immediately, and allowing for more practice.

When printing the game, you will need to print several ‘sets’ depending on the size of your class - ie. for a class of 30, you will likely need 6 copies of the game. My top tip is to print each set out on a different coloured sheet of paper - it is easier to store ready for another class (since you are able to keep them together yet separate), and if any cards are lost, it is immediately clear which group they came from. To save you time, I would also advise not to cut out the circles - I cut the page into 6 small squares on the guillotine in seconds, and I promise the students don’t notice or care if it isn’t cut perfectly!


Type of vocab and sentences

Since this is such a quick game, the vocab you are targeting will be quite simple. What has worked well for me in the past is to use simple nouns, ie. with year 7 this could be animals, school subjects, or numbers. With older groups, you could even do short sentences, for example a key verb. I have done this successfully with year 10 Spanish talking about hobbies with one key verb, for example, I included images like films, music, sports etc, expecting students to say ‘veo películas’, ‘escucho música’, ‘juego al fútbol’ - and we even adapted this to practice the past tense verbs too.


How to create a game for your class

There are several ‘dobble generators’ available online that will create cards for you. I recommend https://macrusher.github.io/dobble-generator/ or https://www.dobblemaker.com. 


For images, you can use sites like flaticons.com, thenounproject.com, or icons8.com for free icons (free with attribution or paid license options available). 

I have created several ready-to-go packs that you can download here, or follow the steps above to create your own!

 

Dobble and Spot It! are trademarks of ASMODEE GROUP.

Image credits for TES resource: hobbies/school subjects/numbers pack: Freepik (Flaticons); animals pack: Icons8

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