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Grade 10 English Classroom Games

Eight games for a Grade 10 class, each tied to what this grade is actually learning: the writing formats the O/L paper asks for - notices, letters, dialogues, forms - done fast and to a word limit.

  • Grade 10
  • Classroom games
  • No equipment
  • Large classes
  • Free

What a Grade 10 class needs from a game

From Grade 10 a game has to justify itself against revision, and the honest way to do that is to make it produce what the paper produces. Every game below ends with a notice, a letter, a dialogue, a form or a paragraph of the kind the Ordinary Level asks for.

The other thing these are built around is speed. The commonest reason for lost marks in the writing section is not poor English but an unfinished answer, and a pupil who has written forty notices in a term under a clock does not run out of time in November.

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 The letter race

  • Time 9 minutes
  • Learners work Individually, then pairs
  • You need None

Language The formal letter: address, salutation, body, closing

  1. Give a situation that needs a formal letter: asking the principal for a certificate, writing to a bookshop about a wrong order.
  2. Eight minutes on the clock, visible. Everybody writes the whole letter, format included.
  3. Stop exactly on time even if nobody has finished, because that is the lesson.
  4. Pairs swap and mark against four things on the board: the format, whether every part of the task was answered, the length, and the register. Marks out of eight.

Variation Harder: six minutes instead of eight, once the class can finish in eight.

Large class Everything is individual and silent until the swap, so size does not matter. The visible clock is essential - a spoken time limit does not produce the same urgency.

2 Notice in fifty words

  • Time 7 minutes
  • Learners work Pairs
  • You need None

Language The notice: what, when, where, who to contact, and brevity

  1. Give a situation. Four minutes to write a notice of no more than fifty words.
  2. Swap with the pair behind. The marking pair counts the words first - over the limit loses marks before anything else is read, exactly as on the paper.
  3. They then check the four required items and circle anything unnecessary.
  4. Board the shortest notice that still contains everything, and read it out.

Variation Harder: thirty-five words, which forces every article and adjective to justify itself.

Large class Counting the words first is what makes this stick. Pupils who have lost marks to a word count in a game stop ignoring it on the paper.

3 The dialogue builder

  • Time 8 minutes
  • Learners work Pairs
  • You need None

Language Completing a dialogue: question forms, short answers, natural replies

  1. Board a six-line dialogue with three lines missing - a pupil asking a teacher about a school trip, say.
  2. Pairs write the missing lines. Three minutes.
  3. Two or three pairs read their whole dialogue aloud, both parts.
  4. The class judges which filled lines actually fit what comes after them - the commonest O/L error here is a line that makes sense alone but not in the conversation.

Variation Harder: the last line is fixed and unusual, so the middle must be steered towards it.

Large class Reading aloud in pairs is the check: a line that does not fit sounds wrong immediately, which is far more convincing to a class than being told.

4 Mark my answer

  • Time 9 minutes
  • Learners work Pairs
  • You need A sample answer on the board, written by you

Language The marking criteria themselves

  1. Board a complete answer to a past question - one you have written, at about the level of a middling pupil, with two or three typical faults in it.
  2. Give the class the criteria, and let pairs mark it out of ten with a reason for each mark lost.
  3. Collect the marks. The spread will be wide, which is itself worth discussing.
  4. Then give your own mark and explain it. Pupils who marked far above or below yours have learned the most.

Variation Two answers of different quality, and the class must place them in order and say what separates them.

Large class One answer on the board, forty-five markers. This is the single most useful game on this page, and it needs no materials at all.

5 Fill the form

  • Time 6 minutes
  • Learners work Individually
  • You need A blank form sketched on the board

Language Form-filling conventions: capitals, dates, no full sentences

  1. Draw a simple form on the board - an application for a library card, a competition entry - with eight or nine fields.
  2. Everybody copies and fills it. Four minutes.
  3. Then give three awkward extras aloud: a field they must leave blank, a date that must be written in a particular way, a box that needs a tick rather than a word.
  4. Pairs check each other for the commonest faults: sentences where a phrase is wanted, and a date written three different ways in one form.

Variation Harder: one field asks for something in fewer than ten words, which is where most marks are lost on a form question.

Large class Copying the form takes two of the six minutes, which is time well spent: copying a layout accurately is itself a marked skill.

6 Picture to paragraph

  • Time 8 minutes
  • Learners work Individually, then rows
  • You need Any picture in the textbook

Language Describing and interpreting: present continuous, there is/are, and inference

  1. Everybody writes six sentences about a picture: three saying what is there, and three saying what they think is happening or about to happen.
  2. The second three are the hard ones and the ones the paper rewards.
  3. Around the rows, each pupil reads one inference sentence only.
  4. The class decides which inferences the picture actually supports, which is exactly the judgement the comprehension section tests.

Variation Harder: no sentence may begin with there is or there are.

Large class Everybody writes six, everybody reads one. The ban on there is in the variation is worth using early, because half the class will otherwise write all six that way.

7 The invitation and the reply

  • Time 8 minutes
  • Learners work Pairs
  • You need None

Language Invitations, acceptances and refusals, formal and informal

  1. One pupil in each pair writes an invitation - to a school concert, a wedding, a sports meet - in the format on the board. Three minutes.
  2. They pass it to their partner, who writes the reply. Half the class should be told privately to refuse, and to give a reason.
  3. Refusing politely is much harder than accepting, and that is why half the class must do it.
  4. Read two acceptances and two refusals, and ask the class which refusal was the least awkward.

Variation Harder: the refusal must offer an alternative, which needs a conditional.

Large class Passing within a pair means no movement. Make sure the refusals are distributed across the room rather than to one side, so both kinds get read out from different rows.

8 Spot the lost marks

  • Time 7 minutes
  • Learners work Rows
  • You need A short answer on the board with four faults in it

Language The four commonest ways marks are lost in the writing section

  1. Board a short answer containing exactly four faults: one part of the task not answered, one register error, one over-long section, one format slip. Do not say what kind they are.
  2. Rows find all four. Three minutes.
  3. Take them one at a time. The part-not-answered is the one rows miss most often, and it is the one that costs the most on the paper.
  4. Rewrite the weakest sentence together as a class.

Variation Put five faults in and tell them there are four, so they must decide which they are most confident about.

Large class One answer on the board, nine rows hunting. Say the number of faults but not their kinds - knowing there are four and having found three is what makes a class read carefully.

Questions teachers ask

Is there time for games in Grade 10?

There is time for whatever produces the most writing per minute, and a well-run game usually beats a revision worksheet on that measure. Judge each one by what is on the page at the end. If nothing is, it did not belong in Grade 10.

My pupils know the formats but still lose marks.

Almost always for one of three things: not answering all parts of the question, running out of time, or ignoring the word limit. All three are habits rather than knowledge, and habits are what a repeated timed game builds. The marking game below is the fastest way to show them where the marks actually go.

Should I mark everything they produce in these?

No, and you could not. Most of these end with pupils marking each other against the criteria, which teaches more than your red pen does, because a pupil who has marked four notices knows what a notice needs. Collect one set a fortnight and mark that properly.

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Back to English Classroom Games