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Color Vowel® Games

Pronunciation games for English Learners

COLOR it out!

Our innovative card game for English learners of all ages.

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Classroom Games

Pronunciation games for intermediate and advanced English learners with printable and online formats.

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Online Game Room

Play games from our new classroom book -- online!

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Play with the sounds of English!

Based on the Color Vowel® Chart, our revolutionary pronunciation game is fun and accessible for learners of all ages and all levels.

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Brain-based learning

Featuring high-frequency words and "sight" words, COLOR it out!® sets the stage for meaningful repetition for improved reading and pronunciation.

ELTS' patented* technique for flooding the target vowel sound creates many opportunities for noticing and self-correction. 

Even emerging readers who are native speakers of English can benefit from playing COLOR it out!®

*U.S. Patent Application No. 15/061,531

What you get

One deck of COLOR it out!® consists of 112 cards, including 103 word cards (7 of which are special action cards (Skip, Reverse, and Plus 2) and 4 Wild cards. That's 206 vocabulary words in each deck!

There are also helper cards, including two instruction cards along with a Chart card and two anchor phrase cards.

COLOR it out!® is perfect for one-on-one tutoring or in large classrooms.  For fast, less competitive play, simply remove the Wild and special action cards.

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Many ways to play

The learning opportunities are endless. The word cards in this 2.0 version of the game have been carefully and meticulously matched in pairs. Some pairs highlight changes between singular and plural nouns and base and past form verbs. Other pairs are based on meaning or context.

Encourage your learners to be creative with the cards. Watch as they sort cards by vowel spelling patterns or arrange chains of words of the same Color to facilitate flooding.  Challenge students to make simple, compound, or complex sentences using words on one card in their hand.

BuyCOLOR it out!® 

Single Deck

$22 (unit price)

Features:

  • One deck supports 2-6 players
  • Each deck comes in a sturdy cardboard case with a divider to keep cards from in good shape
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COLOR it out! PLUS

$30.50 (10% off)

Features:

  • One deck of COLOR it out!®

  • One set of 5th Edition Color Vowel® Image Cards
  • Great gift for a new teacher or an emerging reader
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Class Set

$80.00 (10% off)

Features:

  • 4 decks of COLOR it out!®

  • Ideal for classrooms of 16 to 24 students

  • Buy a set and share with your fellow instructors
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Who doesn't love card games!?

My middle school students find COLOR it out!® extremely engaging, and I find it a powerful tool to introduce and review complicated sounds and spellings in English.

In fact, I used COLOR it out! to introduce my students to the Color Vowel Chart® before ever using it as part of my instruction. I found it to be a very natural point of entry for the Chart.

Since then, we have been exploring additional ways to use the COLOR it out! cards, such as playing Dominoes and Go Fish.

COLOR it out!® is a fantastic, fun, and very powerful resource in my middle school classroom!

Michael Connors
E.L. Haynes Middle School, Washington, DC

I played COLOR it out!® today with my factory students. We had 2 groups of 5. They LOVED it!

Once they were done with a game, they asked if they could keep playing. We played the entire two hours.

One group included two low literacy students. The class wanted them included, so their group had them lay their cards on the table, and they helped them match. They also had them repeat the words after them.

What I really loved is that EVERYONE did the vocal turns together. The entire group said “GRAY DAY bake” etc. One student asked me to order a set for him to play with his family.

Next time I’ll bring along a treat (like cookies or chocolate) for the winners -- although I feel everyone was a winner tonight!

Debbie Garza, ESL Teacher and Consultant

RESOURCES

Download instructions on how to play COLOR it out!®.

VIDEOS

Curious about Accent Variation? 

There are many right ways to speak. The mark-ups in COLOR it out!® reflect a Western US accent and provide the learner with merely one good way to pronounce a given word. We encourage instructors and learners alike to discuss additional word pronunciations that they notice during game play.

OLIVE SOCK versus AUBURN DOG

OLIVE SOCK is the vowel sound featured in words like doctor, father, and car. Words like caught, thought, and ball may be considered OLIVE by some speakers of English (including many in the Western U.S.) or AUBURN by others (especially by many from the Eastern U.S.).  

To simplify play for all learners, COLOR it out!  presents words like caught as OLIVE SOCK, as this vowel sound is comprehensible across accent communities.

If the accent of the instructor or of the region in which the learners are living uses AUBURN, an interesting follow-up lesson might include identification of OLIVE words in the COLOR it out! deck that would be pronounced with AUBURN.

ORANGE DOOR

ORANGE DOOR is the vowel sound featured in words like horse, floor, pour, and war.

While ORANGE DOOR may pose some confusion to native speakers who pronounce "orange" with a different  vowel sound than in "door", most learners do not encounter difficulty with this vowel sound on the Color Vowel Chart®. If learners ask about this vowel sound while playing COLOR it out!, instructors can subsequently explore with their learners the difference between ORANGE DOOR, an R-controlled ROSE BOAT vowel sound, and the possible OLIVE SOCK pronunciation of the word "orange."