When teaching students to read and write, word matching games can be used to teach students to pair lowercase letters with their uppercase mate. They can also teach students to match print and cursive letters. In math, word matching games can be used to teach numbers; students would have to match a drawing of three apples and a drawing of five lemons with the numerals 3 and 5. Or students can pair equivalencies, such as x = 2 with 2x = 4.
Matching games work well for teaching synonyms, antonyms, and definitions. To do this activity, children will match words from a column to a scrambled list of synonyms, antonyms or definitions on the other side of the page. Using this method, students can learn a few new words through the process of elimination as well as review what they already know. It also makes grading easier, because educators can just check for lines drawn to the proper spots, rather than reading children's sometimes messy handwriting.
At first, matching capital cities to states, or international capitals to countries, can seem like a daunting task to students. Matching games help them gain confidence and realize how many they actually know. They are also likely to learn a few capitals each time they do a matching test by having fewer choices to select from at the end of the exercise. If you are giving students the same matching exercise as a pretest and a post-test, make sure to scramble the list of cities from one worksheet to the other -- you don't want the students memorizing the word locations rather than the content.
Word matches can help develop a student's vocabulary in a foreign language. For this type of exercise, students should match words in the language they know (such as English) to the words in the language that they are learning -- Spanish, French, Japanese or others. The exercise works equally well for ESL students, who can match words in their first language with English equivalents. Word matching games help students begin to connect the two words together before they are able to generate the word without a list of possible answers, as in a fill in the blank exercise.