How to Play the Flyswatter Game in Pairs: Partner Matamoscas

Matamoscas is a fun game that’s been around for a long time! I have no idea where it came from, or who first started it, but it sure is fun! Some people just call it the flyswatter game because that’s the main item you need to play. Matamoscas can be played as a whole class, but I also love Partner Matamoscas to engage all students!

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How to Play

If you’re not familiar with this game, La Maestra Loca has a great post here explaining how she plays with her whole class.

Essentially, the students have a board of words in front of them. The teacher calls out a word or phrase, and students race to be the first to “swat the fly” (hit the word)! If you’re playing as a whole class, the game board is usually your whiteboard or screen in the front of the room. To play Partner Matamoscas, I just use a sheet of paper and put it in between two students!

Above you can see a simple example from my Cognates Games and Activities resource! Put one game board between two students and call out a word in either Spanish (for the English board) or English (for the Spanish board). Students then race to be the first to touch the corresponding word. You can have them touch it with their fingers, or you can give students a colored marker and let them strike through the word with their color.

Points during Partner Matamoscas

If you would like, you can have students keep track of points. Sometimes I have them keep track to up the engagement, and sometimes I just want to play! If we do keep track of points I offer this option: if they tie, or can’t agree who got to the word first, Profe gets the point. Huh? Let’s chat about that! If we keep track of points during Partner Matamoscas, their score sheet has a column for Partner 1, Partner 2, and Profe. Why do I bother with this? Because if two students start arguing about who won that round, it’s easy to holler, “Profe points!” and move onto the next round ASAP without them holding up the whole class.

Tweaks for Partner Matamoscas

This is a great game, but does it have to be translation? If the teacher calls in Spanish, that’s a great way for them to be hearing more of the target language, but sometimes we don’t want it to always be from the target language to L1. And you don’t always have to prep the game board ahead of time! Here are some options for you:

• Have students create the game board similar to how La Maestra Loca describes in her post here!
• Have students create a storyboard or illustrate sentences from a story in class. Then, use those images for Matamoscas! Describe the image and let students pick the image that you’re describing.
• Use chunks of language, instead of individual words.

Extra Ideas to Make Partner Matamoscas Even More Magical

Want to keep things fresh and unpredictable? Try using Matamoscas as a quick review station during rotations. Set up a few different boards around the room with different vocab themes like one for verbs, one for school supplies, one for clothing. Let pairs rotate through them like a speed round. Students get a mix of vocab practice and movement and you get a few golden minutes while still looking like the most engaging teacher on campus.

Or turn up the listening practice by reading full sentences aloud instead of single words. Ask students to listen for the target word or phrase and swat it. Want to keep them on their toes? Sneak in a trick sentence every now and then and see who is really listening. It becomes a fun challenge and gives you an easy way to sneak in input and comprehension without it feeling like a quiz. You can also get creative with themes. Seasonal vocabulary? Swat the pumpkin. Grammar review? Swat the correct verb form. Let your students design their own boards with silly drawings or inside jokes and suddenly you have a personalized game they are begging to play again. It is fast, flexible, and full of language learning in disguise.

Your Turn!

Do you play this game in your class? What different ways could you see yourself using it? I’d love to hear your creative spins on Partner Matamoscas. Maybe you’ve tried it with grammar, storytelling, or even as a Friday review game. Drop your ideas in the comments or tag me on social media so we can all steal each other’s genius. The best part of teaching is sharing what works and making it even better together. Let’s keep the ideas flying faster than those swatters.

Looking for more tech-free activities?

Check out this blog post with hands on activities you can use with your classes!