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Grade 1 English Classroom Games

Eight games for a Grade 1 class, each tied to what this grade is actually learning: listening, repeating and doing - colours, numbers, animals, classroom things, and following an instruction in English.

  • Grade 1
  • Classroom games
  • No equipment
  • Large classes
  • Free

What a Grade 1 class needs from a game

Grade 1 English is oral. The pupils are listening, repeating and doing, and they are not yet reading or writing in English, so none of these games asks a pupil to write anything.

What a game has to achieve at this age is narrower than it looks: every child says the word aloud, and every child understands an instruction given in English. Those two things are the whole lesson, and a game is simply the only way to get forty-five six-year-olds to do them forty times without complaining.

Eight games, no equipment

None of these needs a photocopier, a projector or a set of cards. Every one says what to do when the class has forty-five pupils in it, because that is the class most teachers reading this have.

1 Touch the colour

  • Time 5 minutes
  • Learners work Whole class, in their places
  • You need None

Language Colours, and the instruction touch

  1. Say touch something blue. Every pupil touches something blue within reach - a shirt, a bag, a friend's ribbon.
  2. Look around and name what you see: Kavindu is touching a blue bag. Good. The class hears the colour again in a sentence.
  3. Repeat with four or five colours, faster each time.
  4. Finish with a colour that is hard to find, such as touch something black, and let them look around the room for it.

Variation Harder: two things at once - touch something blue and something white.

Large class This is better in a large class than a small one, because nobody moves from their place. Stand at the back for one round so the pupils at the back are the ones you can see.

2 The sound basket

  • Time 6 minutes
  • Learners work Whole class, then two halves
  • You need None

Language Initial sounds, and any known nouns

  1. Say I am putting things in my basket that begin with /b/. Say three: ball, book, bag.
  2. Ask the class for more. Accept any word beginning with the sound, and repeat each one back clearly so the whole class hears it correctly.
  3. When a pupil offers a word with the wrong sound, do not say wrong. Say the word, then say the sound it starts with, then ask the class whether it goes in the basket.
  4. Change the sound and split the class in two halves, each half finding words for a different sound.

Variation Easier: hold up or point to real objects in the room instead of asking them to think of words.

Large class Two halves rather than teams by row, because the counting is slow at this age and two groups is enough competition for six-year-olds.

3 Clap when you hear it

  • Time 4 minutes
  • Learners work Whole class
  • You need None

Language One target word or sound, heard inside a list

  1. Choose a word the class has just learned, for example cat.
  2. Say a slow list of words, some of which are cat: bag, cat, cup, cat, cake, cat. The class claps once every time they hear it.
  3. Start slowly. Speed up only when everybody is getting it.
  4. Then swap the target word and do it again, and let a pupil read out the list - which at this age means saying words they know, not reading from paper.

Variation Harder: two target words with two different actions, clap for one and stand for the other.

Large class Perfect for a large class: forty-five pupils clapping together tells you instantly who is following and who is copying their neighbour half a second late.

4 Big voice, small voice

  • Time 5 minutes
  • Learners work Whole class
  • You need None

Language Any new word set - animals, food, classroom things

  1. Say a new word in a big voice. The class says it back in a big voice.
  2. Say it in a small voice, almost a whisper. The class whispers it back.
  3. Alternate unpredictably - big, small, small, big - so that they must listen rather than chant automatically.
  4. Move through six or seven words this way, and end with the whole list in a whisper, which is the quietest the class will be all period.

Variation Add a slow voice and a fast voice, which practises the word's syllables without ever mentioning the word syllable.

Large class The volume change is the classroom management: a class that has just whispered a word is already quiet, so put this immediately before something that needs their attention.

5 Point to it first

  • Time 5 minutes
  • Learners work Pairs, sitting as they are
  • You need None

Language Classroom objects: door, window, board, desk, bag, book, pen

  1. Name the objects with the whole class twice, pointing at each.
  2. Put the pupils in pairs with their partner next to them - no movement.
  3. Say an object. In each pair, the first of the two to point at it correctly wins that round. They keep their own score on their fingers.
  4. After eight or nine objects, ask who has three fingers up, four, five. Everybody has a number, so nobody has lost.

Variation Harder: say a short sentence instead of a word - the thing we write on - so they must understand rather than recognise.

Large class Finger scoring is what makes this work with forty-five: no board, no paper, no dispute, and you can see every score from the front in one glance.

6 Count and stop

  • Time 5 minutes
  • Learners work Whole class, then by row
  • You need None

Language Numbers 1 to 20

  1. The class counts aloud together from one. You clap once, and they stop instantly on that number.
  2. Say the number they stopped on, then start again from one.
  3. Now go round the rows: the first pupil says one, the next two, and so on along the row and into the next. When you clap, the pupil whose turn it is sits down and the count starts again at one.
  4. Keep it quick. The point is the counting, not the elimination.

Variation Harder: count backwards from twenty, or count in twos.

Large class Going along rows means every pupil says a number within two minutes, which individual questioning could never manage in a class of forty-five.

7 The animal walk

  • Time 6 minutes
  • Learners work Whole class, standing at their places
  • You need None

Language Animals, and the verbs walk, jump, fly, swim, run

  1. Teach or revise five animals and the way each one moves: a frog jumps, a bird flies, a fish swims.
  2. Everybody stands at their place. Say an animal; the class does the movement on the spot and says the verb: jump!
  3. Then say a verb and let them call out an animal that does it.
  4. Finish by saying an animal name quietly and letting the class move quietly, which brings the noise down before they sit.

Variation Ask one confident pupil to be the caller for the last three rounds.

Large class On the spot, never around the room. Forty-five children moving between desks costs four minutes and you do not get them back.

8 Pass the picture, say the word

  • Time 6 minutes
  • Learners work Rows
  • You need One page or object per row - a picture from a textbook is enough

Language Any noun set the class is learning

  1. Give the first pupil in each row a picture or an object.
  2. On your signal it passes along the row. Every pupil who receives it says the word aloud before passing it on.
  3. The row that reaches the end first, with everybody having said the word, wins.
  4. Send a different picture down each row and run it again, so each row practises a new word.

Variation Harder: the pupil must say a short sentence - this is a ball - not just the noun.

Large class Passing along the row is the only way every one of forty-five pupils speaks in six minutes. Walk beside a different row each round, because the middle of a row is where a child stays silent.

Questions teachers ask

They shout. Is that a problem?

Not in itself - a Grade 1 class saying a word loudly together is doing exactly what it should. What matters is that the noise stops when you ask. Practise the stopping signal on the first day with nothing at stake, use the same one every time, and the volume stops being a discipline question.

Some pupils say nothing at all.

At this age a silent child is usually still listening, and pressing them to speak alone in front of forty-four others makes it worse rather than better. Whole-class repetition and group chanting let them join when ready, which is why most of the games below have the whole class speaking at once rather than one pupil at a time.

How long should a Grade 1 game last?

Four to six minutes. A six-year-old's attention for one activity is shorter than the length of most games as written, and two short rounds on different days teach more than one long round that ended badly.

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More for your classroom

All classroom games by grade

The hub, with a page for every grade and the four rules that decide whether a game teaches anything.

Printable Flashcards and Classroom Games

Make a set of cards from your own word list, with eight games that use them.

Classroom Activities

Short activities for an ordinary lesson, not only for a game.

Classroom Management

Getting a large class into teams and back out again without losing the period.

Back to English Classroom Games