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Flashcards are one of the excellent learning and teaching tools especially If we’re working with children They are particularly useful and an ideal way to stimulate the children. When we are trying to introduce a new language to our students, we can use flashcards as they also help children improve their knowledge and ability to understand and improve visual memory.It is a fact that children can’t focus like adults do that's why we really have to be more creative with our teaching methods. We know that there are many types of learners. At this point, we can say that flashcards are a great tool for visual learners too because they are bright and illustrative. They make an impact on visual learners. There are many activities for using flashcards. We can start with 'lip reading activity'. Teacher ask a student to come to the board. She/he shows this student a flashcard. Student says the name of the flashcard silently and other students read his/her lips. For example, in our daily lesson plan, our objective is that students will be able to become more familiar with phrases and commands used in the classroom. And according to our keywords, we can use flashcards that show expressions such as be quiet / work in a group / put your hand up / hold your card up / close your book / go to the board / open your book / take out your crayons / work with a friend etc. We can continue with ‘missing’ activity. Teacher removes one flashcard and ask which flashcard is missing. He/she asks students to elicit the names of all flashcards and the missing one. The teacher removes another one and make students elicit the names of all flashcards. Teacher continues until all flashcards are missing. Another activity that we can do in the classroom is that teacher makes the students pass along the flashcards to each other. When teacher shouts ‘STOP’ the student holding the flashcard uses the word in a sentence. The teacher can say ‘STOP’ as often as he/she wants with the flashcard and continue with other flashcards. The 4th flashcard activity is called ‘Tap it’ . Teacher divides the class into two teams. He/she sticks any six flashcards on the board. The teacher calls a student from each team to stand in front of the flashcards. He/she says the name of one of the cards. The first student to tap the correct card, gets a point. Teacher continues the game with another set of six flashcards. And the last activity that we can do is called ‘Quick flash’ . The teacher places a group of flashcard in a pile facing her/him. Quickly, he/she turns one flashcard around to face the pupils, then turns it back again. Pupils identify the flashcards they saw. To sum up, we can say that flashcards can be used for both receptive and productive activities as learners look at the picture and recognize the word and then they use the word. They can be highly motivating. So we can remember new words and expressions in a most efficient way with flashcards.
