Purpose:

To review vocabulary and to encourage learners to think about commonly used letters in English

Preparation time:

5-10 minutes to decide on words to use for the game.

Materials: 

A whiteboard or paper and different colors of markers

Preparation:

Decide how many teams you will divide the class into. You should have a different colored marker for each team. Choose words that you will use.

Procedure:

1. Put three words on the board, for example, apple, orange, banana. Ask the students what the words have in common. Explain that you are going to play hangman, but that instead of just one word, there will be three words that are similar in some way. The object of the game is not just to guess the individual words, but to guess what they have in common and to guess as many correct letters as possible.
2. Divide the class into teams and assign each team a color.
3. Draw the letter blanks for the first three words you have chosen, a base for the hangman and a score-keeping table for the teams.          
4. Call on the first team for a letter. If they are the blue team, write the letter in the blanks with the blue marker. Continue calling on teams to supply letters, writing the letters in the gaps in the correct colors. If a team wishes to guess the category and all three words, they may do so instead of offering a letter. If they guess everything correctly, they get 10 bonus points and play stops. If they guess the category or any of the words incorrectly, they are out of the rest of that round. When play stops because a team has guessed correctly or because the hangman has been completed, count up all the letters for each team and add to the team scores. (If there are six Es, that is six points.)

Variations:

After playing a few times, let the students come up with the words and categories and conduct the game.