Playing Card Activity to Get Students Into Groups
Jann Lacoss, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures and TRC

1) Group the playing cards by number (all aces together, twos, threes, etc.)

2) Based on the number of students in class, gather enough cards for each student to have one. If there are 20 students, take 5 sets of cards (4 of each number to a set).

3) Shuffle and distribute these cards.

4) Have students form groups based on their card number.

For the activity itself:

5) Assign each person a task for the exercise: clubs do this, diamonds do that. Be sure that the students know that regardless of their task assignment, all of them are responsible for reporting back to the class.

6) When reporting back, assign one suit to report, then change after a few reports. For example, start with diamonds reporting back, then after two or three brief reports, switch to hearts.