This year I finally completed a goal I’d had for many years: to make my own Guess Who? game using important or famous people from Spanish-speaking and Latinx communities. One of my units centers on physical descriptions and I had already purchased the game boards, so all that was left to do was create new cards, which is easier than it sounds! It was without a doubt the most time consuming task of my teaching career, but so worth it! In previous years I had purchased several copies of the original game Guess Who? and the knockoff version Who is it? . There is literally no difference between the game instructions, both include 24 people and you ask a series of Yes/No questions to determine the other player’s secret person before they figure out yours. If you plan to use my cards to make your own, I recommend the original Guess Who? because the cards are a little bigger and the board is a little better quality.
I began by creating a list of people I could include in the game, knowing that I wanted 12 men and 12 women in the final product. My list included artists, athletes, activists, politicians, musicians and actors. Once I had a list I began searching for pictures to use, and this was by far the most time consuming part. First, I had to be able to zoom in close enough to see facial features. Second, no two people can be described in the same way, so I had to find pictures of people wearing hats or glasses where you can still see eye-color. Because of that, some of the pictures I chose aren’t the best ones of that person, but rather pictures that would work best for the purpose of the game. Also the pictures I could find determined which people from my list made it into the game, since they all had to be slightly different.
Once I had my 24 pictures, I used Google Draw to create the cards by measuring the cards from each game board and then creating boxes of the same size. From there I printed the pictures in color on white card stock. Then began the most tedious part of the process, cutting out the pictures. My small scrapbook paper trimmer was a godsend! Originally I had planned to laminate the pictures after cutting them out, but realized after my trial set that it was actually easier to make out the person’s features when the paper wasn’t laminated. However, I did laminate a full sheet of pictures to go with each board that students use to pick their secret person. I did not want to cut out another whole batch of cards that could eventually get lost. Finally, I replaced the original cards with the new cards I had created.
Needless to say, this was quite the process and it might have been the only thing I did for an entire week, but it was so worth it! My students have always loved to play Guess Who? and they really loved the new version. Before we played I did spend a class period talking about each of the people in the game and had students practice writing sentences in Spanish describing their physical characteristics. I thought it was important that students knew who these people were and had already seen them before playing the game. They were excited to find people they knew on the slides and interested to learn about those they didn’t. I also loved that the lesson integrated Spanish skills with culture!
The good news is that you don’t have to start from scratch! Feel free to use the boards I’ve created or make a copy of them to change the people. After the time I spent trying to find a similar resource I am happy to share this one so other teachers can benefit!
Introduction to people included in the game
I recommend 4 copies of the game boards for each game set: 2 to be cut up and used as the cards and 2 to be left whole or cut up for students to pick their secret person from and use to answer questions.
