Guess Who? Game for Speech Therapy
How Can I Use the Guess Who? Game for Speech Therapy?
The Guess Who? Game is an ideal way for school-aged kids to learn to ask and answer yes / no questions…and it’s lots of fun!
Number of Players: 2
Ages: 6+. Younger children may find it difficult to follow the specific questioning format, so team them up with an adult.
Target: Teach kids to ask questions in a specific way. It can also be used to develop vocabulary for describing people such as hair or eye color, face shape, etc.
How it’s played: Each player has a game board with pictures of all of the characters and each selects one character card for the other player to guess. The kids take turns asking each other questions that can only be answered by a "yes" or "no" response. For example, “Does your character have blue eyes?” or "Is your character wearing glasses?"
Using the Guess Who? Game for Speech Therapy
Asking Questions
Sometimes I find that the yes / no question format can be restrictive for kids who are just learning to ask questions. Therefore, I tend to use this game as a reward with a therapeutic / educational element rather than as a therapy task in itself.
Each question must be answerable with only a "yes" or "no" so it teaches kids to phrase questions accurately. For example, asking, “What color are his eyes?” would mean your opponent can’t answer. Kids quickly learn to rephrase the question to, “Does he have green eyes?”
Vocabulary Development and Describing Faces
The best way to use the Guess Who? Game for Speech Therapy is for teaching descriptive language for faces. This can be particularly useful for older, verbal kids with autism who may need a little help to notice differences in facial features.
There are obvious differences between characters such as hair color or whether they are wearing a hat. Other, more subtle differences include face shape, eyebrow thickness, and the size and shape of the nose.
I love this game because it is simple to put up and pack away meaning it can be used as a quick reward game at the end of a busy session. Play rarely takes more than 5 minutes, even with kids needing support, but it is interesting enough to be repeated many times if you are looking to fill a longer gap.
Now you know all there is to know about using the Guess Who? game for Speech Therapy – are you ready to play? Have fun!
