Conversation Cards - Let's talk mini - ALIKE

The world is as we see it. An excellent example of the power of our interpretation are the ALIKE cards.

Each of the 48 cards in the “Alike” mini set contains a pair of people, things, activities or situations that do not seem connected but the students are supposed to work out how they are in fact alike by finishing the sentence: “... are alike because both/neither…”

You can ask the students to use either one of the quantifiers or both in their explanation.

You can ask the students to come up with a particular number of explanations.

It is possible to modify the statement on each card by adding prepositions and personal pronouns e.g. “... are alike because for both you…”

As a twist on the task, you can ask the students then to change ‘alike’ into ‘different’ so that instead of looking for similarities, they will be looking for differences.

Another idea will be for one student to pick a card and keep the content hidden from their partner(s). The student changes the beginning into ‘they’ and finishes the sentence while the other students try to guess what the two words are.

You can also ask the students to replace one of the words on their card with something else but the condition is that the sentence they originally came up with must still be true. An even more challenging task will be to replace both of the words without changing the end of their sentence.

Obviously, you can ask the students to change one of the words in each pair and finish the sentence in a new way. They can swap words using suggestions from the other cards in the set or prepare their own pairs of words to add to the 48.

Example cards:

Teachers and ghosts are alike because both/neither …

Money and time are alike because both/neither …

Going to school and dating are alike because both/neither …

Baking and talking to children are alike because both/neither …

Author: Ewa Torebko