Stop the Bus
One letter, five categories, sixty seconds. Name a food, a country, an animal and more that start with the letter before the timer runs out.
One letter, 5 categories
Every answer has to start with the letter, and you get 60 seconds. Say them out loud, write the ones worth keeping.
Save a set · free
Want your own questions on the stop the bus? Type them once, save the set, play it any time on any device.
Playing this with a student?
In a lesson, open it from Resources and share your screen — and save your own set first so the game runs on your student's words, not a stock list.
Start freeHow to play
Take a letter
Each round gives you one letter and five categories. Everything you name has to start with that letter — which is what stops the categories being answered on autopilot.
Fill the categories before the timer
Sixty seconds on the clock. Work down the categories in any order; a blank is better than a stall, so tell your student to skip and come back rather than freeze on a hard one.
Score it out loud
When time is up, go through the answers together and make the student justify anything borderline. Is it really a food? Is that spelling right? The scoring conversation is reliably the most talkative minute of the round.
Stop the Bus as a teaching tool
It measures retrieval speed, which is the thing conversation actually needs
Most vocabulary work asks whether a student knows a word. This asks whether they can find it in under a minute with a constraint attached, which is far closer to what speaking demands. A learner with a large passive vocabulary and slow retrieval sounds far less fluent than one with half the words and quick access. Rounds of this, played regularly, work directly on the retrieval side — and the gap between what a student recognises and what they can produce under time pressure is worth showing them explicitly, because it explains why conversation feels so much harder than the workbook.
Argue about the borderline answers
The scoring is where the language is. Is a tomato a food? Is Wales a country? Does a dolphin count as an animal if the category was pets? A student defending a marginal answer in English is doing exactly the improvised, reason-giving speaking the lesson is for, and it happens naturally because they want the point. Give the point for the argument, not for the answer, and the whole game tilts toward speaking. Half-points for a spirited defence are a legitimate teaching tool.
Make the categories do the work
The default categories are deliberately general, which is right for a warm-up and wrong for targeted practice. Swap them for what you are teaching and the same sixty seconds becomes a drill: five irregular past forms, five phrasal verbs, five jobs, five things in a kitchen, five adjectives for personality. A category list built around this week's lesson is the difference between a filler and an activity, and writing that list takes about ninety seconds.
Groups, levels and the online lesson
In a group, the classic rule is worth keeping: an answer nobody else wrote scores double, which pushes students away from the obvious word and into the edges of their vocabulary. With A1 learners, drop to three categories and sixty seconds, and accept single words with imperfect spelling — the retrieval is the point. With B2 and above, require a full sentence for at least one category. Online, share your screen and have the student dictate while you type: speaking under time pressure is harder than typing under time pressure, and it is the skill you want.
Frequently asked questions
What levels is Stop the Bus for?
Roughly A1 to B2, and it scales by what you demand rather than by the game. A beginner naming three things in sixty seconds is working hard; an upper-intermediate student should be filling five categories and defending the awkward ones in full sentences. The letter and the timer do not change — your requirements do.
How do I use it in an English lesson?
As a warm-up, or as revision at the end. Share your screen, run one round, then spend as long scoring as you did playing — the justification of borderline answers is where most of the speaking happens. Two or three rounds is usually the right length before it starts to feel repetitive.
Can I choose my own categories?
Yes. Sign up free and save your own set of categories, and the game runs on yours. Categories aimed at what you taught this week — five phrasal verbs, five things in an office, five irregular verbs — turn a general warm-up into targeted revision.
What do I do about spelling mistakes?
Decide before you start, and say so. For a speaking-focused round, ignore spelling entirely and take the word if it is recognisable. For a written round, count it, but give the student a chance to correct it for a half point — the self-correction is worth more than the mark.
Does it work in group classes?
It is arguably better in a group. Everyone plays the same letter at once, then compares; unique answers score double, which rewards the student who reached past the obvious word. With a large class, run it in teams so the weaker speakers are contributing rather than exposed.
Can a student play it alone for homework?
Yes, though it loses the scoring argument that makes it valuable in class. As homework it works best as a challenge with a record to beat, and with the instruction to bring back any category they could not fill — those blanks are a ready-made list of what to teach next.
More games
The free ones need no signup; open one and play.
Share your screen, everyone races the timer
Open it from Resources and share your screen: the letter and the categories are on screen, your student says their answers and you tick them off. Save your own categories as a set.
Free to start · No credit card · Your student never pays
Your sentences, not a stock deck
Type your student's own words, errors or target structures into a set once. It saves to your account and the game plays your material instead of a generic list.
The game isn't the whole lesson
Open it from Resources inside the room your video, lesson notes, the Space whiteboard and 700+ ready-to-teach lessons already live in — so a warm-up is two clicks from the work it's warming up.
What came up gets kept
Add a word that comes up and it becomes a flashcard your student keeps practising between lessons — and the post-lesson AI report writes up what you covered.