20 Games to Play on Zoom With Students - Say Goodbye to Zoom Gloom!

The pandemic has caused a tectonic shift in how people interact, work, and socialise. As we all try to figure out a way to survive and accommodate the changes, there’s a group that we should be paying a little more attention to – students!

The transition from classroom learning to virtual was sudden and drastic for most of them, and there are even kids who never got to experience a real classroom. How can you make the virtual learning sessions fun and interactive for them?

Here are 20 Games to play on Zoom with Students to make their virtual classroom experience the best.

Check out more ideas with AhaSlides

20 Fun Activities to do on Zoom With Students

To strengthen student engagement and build their interest in remote learning, it’s essential to mix up the classes with fun Zoom games. Check out some of these exciting online games to play on Zoom with students.

#1 – Zoom In

Select a few pictures that are related to the topic you are teaching.
Zoom in and crop them in any way you want.
Display the pictures one by one on the screen and ask the students to guess what they are.
The student with the correct guesses wins.

#2 – Hunt the House

Sitting in front of a computer screen, listening to teachers lecture about different topics for an entire day can be exhausting, irrespective of what age group you belong to. Give the students a fun and easy game without having to leave the comfort of their homes or get into trouble outside.

Create a list of everyday items found in every house.
Display the list on the screen and ask the students to find them within a set time limit of 5-10 minutes.
The topics can be related to the class you are teaching. For example, for a science class, you could ask the students to find different states of matter.
The student with the maximum number of items found in the least amount of time wins.

#3 – 20 Questions

Divide the class into teams and assign a leader to each of them.
Give the leader a word.
The leader can tell the team members whether they are thinking of a person, place, or a thing.
The team gets a total of 20 questions to ask the leader and find out the word they are thinking of.
The answer to the questions should be a simple yes or no.
If the team guesses the word correctly, they get the point. If they are unable to guess the word within 20 questions, the leader wins.

A Q&A slide on AhaSlides with participants playing the game 20 — games to play on zoom with students

Waiting for a turn to speak and ask questions on Zoom can be awkward. For this game, you can use an online interactive presentation tool, like AhaSlides. With just one click, you can create an easy, organised Q&A session for your students and the questions can be answered one by one without confusion.

Try AhaSlides for free

#4 – Mad Gab

Divide the class into groups.
Display jumbled words on the screen that do not make any sense. For example – “Ache Inks High Sped”.
Ask each team to sort the words and try to make a sentence that means something within three guesses.
In the above example, it rearranges to “A king-size bed”.

#5 – Follow the Letters

This can be an easy, fun activity to do on zoom with your students to take a break from the synchronous classes. The game is easy to play and helps build students’ spelling and vocabulary skills.

Choose a category – animals, plants, daily objects – it can be anything
The teacher says a word first, like “apple”.
The first student will have to name a fruit that starts with the last letter of the previous word – so, “E”.
The game goes on till every student gets a chance to play
To spice up the fun, you could use a spinner wheel to pick a person to come after each student

A spinner wheel by AhaSlides to pick the participant during an online zoom game for students — *Selecting the next player using AhaSlides Spinner Wheel*

#6 – Pictionary

Playing this classic game online is now easy.

Log into a multiplayer, online, Pictionary platform like Drawasaurus.
You can create a private room (group) for up to 16 members. If you have more than 16 students in the class, you could divide the class into teams and keep competition between two teams.
Your private room will have a room name and a password to enter the room.
You can draw using multiple colours, erase the drawing if needed and guess the answers in the chatbox.
Each team gets three chances to decipher the drawing and figure out the word.
The game can be played on a computer, mobile or tablet.

#7 – I Spy

One of the main points of concern during a virtual learning session is the students’ observation skills. You can play “I Spy” as a filler game between lessons to refresh the topics you’ve gone through that day.

The game is played individually and not as teams.
Each student gets a chance to describe one object of their choice, using an adjective.
The student says, “I spy something red on the teacher’s table,” and the person next to them has to guess.
You can play as many rounds as you like.

#8 – Top 5

Give the students a topic. Say, for example, “top 5 snacks for a break”.
Ask the students to list down the popular choices they think would be, on a live word cloud.
The most popular entries will appear the largest in the centre of the cloud.
The students who guessed number 1 (which is the most popular snack) will receive 5 points, and the points decrease as we go down in popularity.

A word cloud on AhaSlides with the names of sweet snacks

#9 – Fun With Flags

This is a team-building activity to play with older students.

Divide the class into teams.
Display flags of different countries and ask each team to name them.
Each team gets three questions, and the team with the most correct answers wins.

#10 – Guess the Sound

Kids love guessing games, and it’s even better when audio or visual techniques are involved.

Choose a topic of interest to the students – it could be cartoons or songs.
Play the sound and ask the students to guess what it’s related to or who the voice belongs to.
You can record their answers and discuss at the end of the game how they found the correct answers or why they said a specific answer.

#11 – Weekend Trivia

This trivia game is perfect to beat the Monday blues. Using a free interactive presentation tool like AhaSlides, you can host an open-ended fun session where the students can answer the question without a word limit.

Ask the students what they did on the weekend.
You can set a time limit and display the answers once everyone has submitted theirs.
Then ask the students to guess who did what on the weekend.

An open ended slide on AhaSlides with activities taken place over the weekend.

#12 – Tic-Tac-Toe

This is one of the classic games that everyone would have played in the past, and still likely enjoy playing, irrespective of age.

Two students will compete with each other to create vertical, diagonal or horizontal rows of their symbols.
The first person to get the row filled wins and gets to compete with the next winner.
You can play the game virtually here.

#13 – Mafia

Choose one student to be the detective.
Mute everyone’s mics except for the detective and tell them to close their eyes.
Pick two of the other students to be the mafia.
The detective gets three guesses to figure out who all belongs to the mafia.

#14 – Odd One Out

Odd one out is a perfect online game to help students learn vocabulary and categories.

Choose a category such as ‘fruit’.
Show the students a set of words and ask them to single out the word that doesn’t fit in the category.
You can use multiple choice questions in a poll format to play this game.

#15 – Memory

Prepare an image with random objects placed on a table or in a room.
Display the image for a certain time – maybe 20-60 seconds to memorise the items in the image.
They are not allowed to take a screenshot, picture or write down the objects during this time.
Take away the picture and ask the students to list down the objects they remember.

#16 – Interest Inventory

Virtual learning has impacted the social skills of students a lot, and this fun online game could help them redevelop.

Give out a worksheet to each student that includes their hobbies, interests, favourite movies, places and things.
The students get 24 hours to fill out the worksheet and send it back to the teacher.
The teacher then displays the filled worksheet of each student a day and asks the rest of the class to guess who it belongs to.

#17 – Simon Says

‘Simon says” is one of the popular games teachers can use in both real and virtual classroom settings. It can be played with three or more students and is an excellent warm-up activity before starting a class.

It is best if the students could remain standing for the activity.
The teacher will be the leader.
The leader yells out different actions, but the students should do it only when the action is said along with “Simon says”.
For example, when the leader says “touch your toe”, the students should remain the same. But when the leader says, “Simon says touch your toe”, they should do the action.
The last student standing wins the game.

#18 – Hit it in Five

Choose a category of words.
Ask the students to name three things that belong to the category under five seconds – “name three insects”, “name three fruits”, etc.,
You could play this individually or as a group depending on the time constraints.

#19 – Pyramid

This is a perfect team-building activity and can be used as a filler between classes or as an activity related to the topic you are teaching.

The teacher displays a random word on the screen, such as “museum”, for each team.
The team members then have to come up with six words that are related to the word displayed.
In this case, it’ll be “art, science, history, artefacts, display, vintage”, etc.
The team with the most number of words wins.

#20 – Rock, Paper, Scissors

Who wouldn’t like to play this classic, fun game? If you are looking for a way to get the students out of the long, exhausting, virtual classes, this is gold!

The game is played in pairs.
It can be played in rounds where the winner from each round will compete with each other in the next round.
The idea is to have fun, and you can choose to have a winner or not.

Looking for multiple online platforms to play interactive games and activities can be daunting, especially when you have tons to prepare for the class. AhaSlides offer a wide range of interactive presentation options that are both fun for teachers and students. Take a look at our public template library to learn more.