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Grade 3 English Classroom Games

Eight games for a Grade 3 class, each tied to what this grade is actually learning: can and can't, where things are, days and weather, likes and dislikes, and the first written sentences.

  • Grade 3
  • Classroom games
  • No equipment
  • Large classes
  • Free

What a Grade 3 class needs from a game

Grade 3 is the year reading and writing English start to carry weight, so a game may now ask for a written word - but a short one, and never as the main event. A game that becomes a writing exercise has stopped being a game and the class will notice before you do.

The language of this year is about what a pupil can do, where things are, and what they like, and all three are easy to turn into a rule that forces the target language out. That is why these games work: the sentence is the only way to score.

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 Can you, can't you

  • Time 7 minutes
  • Learners work Rows as teams
  • You need None

Language Can and can't for ability: I can swim. I can't drive.

  1. Board six actions: swim, ride a bicycle, cook rice, drive, sing, climb a tree.
  2. Each row decides, quietly, one thing that every single pupil in the row can do. Two minutes.
  3. A row announces it: We can all sing. Any row that can truthfully say the same scores a point too - so the game rewards a row for guessing what the others can do, not just themselves.
  4. Then reverse it: one thing nobody in the row can do, using can't.

Variation Harder: the row must find something they can all do that no other row can, which takes real negotiation in English.

Large class The row is the team and nobody moves. The quiet negotiation inside each row is where most of the speaking happens, so let it run and walk between the rows listening rather than watching the front.

2 Where is the duster?

  • Time 6 minutes
  • Learners work Whole class, one pupil out at a time
  • You need None - any small object

Language Prepositions of place: in, on, under, behind, next to, between

  1. One pupil closes their eyes. Hide a duster somewhere in the room while the class watches.
  2. The pupil opens their eyes and asks is it under the table? The class answers no, it isn't or yes, it is.
  3. Three questions only, then a new pupil. The short limit keeps it moving and means eight pupils get a turn.
  4. When it is found, the whole class says where it was in a full sentence: It was behind the door.

Variation Harder: the class may only answer warm or cold, so the guesser must produce far more sentences.

Large class The forty-four who are not guessing are the ones answering, in unison, so nobody is idle. Insist on the full short answer rather than a nod.

3 Monday to Sunday scramble

  • Time 5 minutes
  • Learners work Seven pupils at the front, the rest directing
  • You need Seven slips of paper with the days written on them

Language Days of the week, and before, after, first, last

  1. Give seven pupils one day each. They stand at the front in the wrong order, holding the papers so the class can read them.
  2. The class directs them into the right order, speaking only in English: Wednesday, go after Tuesday.
  3. Once they are right, the whole class reads the days aloud in order, then backwards.
  4. Swap the seven pupils and run it again with a different starting muddle.

Variation Harder: use the months, with twelve pupils and the class directing.

Large class Only seven pupils are at the front, so take the instructions row by row - row one gives the first instruction, row two the next - and every row speaks.

4 I like, I don't like

  • Time 6 minutes
  • Learners work Pairs, then the whole class
  • You need None

Language Like and don't like with food, and so do I

  1. Board eight foods, mixing the obvious with the arguable: rice, bread, fish, brinjal, mango, coconut sambol, tea, bitter gourd.
  2. In pairs, each pupil says which they like and which they do not, in full sentences. The partner replies so do I or I don't.
  3. Walk round and find two pairs who disagreed about something. Let each pair say their disagreement to the class.
  4. Finish with a class count on the most argued-about food and write the two numbers on the board.

Variation Harder: add because - I don't like bitter gourd because it is bitter - which is the first real reason-giving of the year.

Large class Pairs sitting side by side, no movement. The two pairs who report have already said their sentences once, which is why they can say them to forty-five people.

5 The weather window

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

Language Weather words, and it is raining / it is sunny

  1. Look out of the window together and say what the weather is, in a full sentence.
  2. Then call out places and let the class guess the weather: Nuwara Eliya in December. Hambantota in July.
  3. Now mime: you act a weather without speaking - shivering, fanning yourself, opening an umbrella - and the class says the sentence.
  4. Let three pupils come and mime a weather for the class.

Variation Harder: ask what they wear in that weather, which brings in clothes vocabulary without a new lesson.

Large class Miming from the front is visible to forty-five in a way that a picture held up is not. Choose the three pupils from the back rows, who are usually chosen last.

6 Draw what I say

  • Time 8 minutes
  • Learners work Individually, then pairs
  • You need None

Language Prepositions, colours and numbers together

  1. Everybody has a blank half-page. You describe a simple picture slowly: There is a house. There is a tree next to the house. There are three birds above the tree.
  2. Say each sentence twice only. Six or seven sentences is plenty.
  3. Then draw your own version on the board and let them compare in pairs, in English: I have two birds. You have three.
  4. The differences tell you exactly which preposition the class has not got, which is worth more than the drawings.

Variation Harder: a pupil describes and the class draws, which is much harder for the describer than for the class.

Large class The quietest game here and the best for a large class, because every pupil is working and the comparison at the end is done in pairs rather than by you.

7 The time race

  • Time 7 minutes
  • Learners work Rows as teams
  • You need None

Language Telling the time on the hour and half hour, and what time do you...?

  1. Draw a large blank clock face on the board.
  2. Call a time - half past four - and the first pupil from each row comes and draws the hands. Fastest correct row scores.
  3. After four or five rounds, change it: you draw the hands and the rows say the time in a full sentence.
  4. End with real times: What time do you get up? What time does school start? answered around the rows.

Variation Harder: quarter past and quarter to, which is where most Grade 3 classes come unstuck.

Large class One pupil per row at the board means five or six at once, which is manageable; twenty is not. Send the next pupil in each row every round so it works down the rows automatically.

8 Three things about me

  • Time 7 minutes
  • Learners work Whole class
  • You need None

Language Simple present sentences about oneself, and listening for detail

  1. Say three sentences about yourself, one of which is false: I have two brothers. I can ride a bicycle. I don't like tea.
  2. The class votes on which is false, then you tell them.
  3. Give every pupil two minutes to think of their own three, with one false. Board the sentence starters they need: I have..., I can..., I don't like...
  4. Take six or seven pupils, spread across the rows. Each says their three and the class votes.

Variation Harder: the class may ask one question before voting, which forces a question form out of them.

Large class Everybody prepares, only seven perform, and the other thirty-eight are listening and voting rather than waiting. Note down who spoke and start with those pupils' rows next time.

Questions teachers ask

Is it worth playing a game when the syllabus is behind?

A game is only worth the period if it produces more language per pupil than the alternative, and with forty-five pupils it very often does. Twenty minutes of a game in which every pupil says eight sentences beats twenty minutes of a lesson in which nine pupils say one each. Judge it by that, not by how it feels.

How do I stop it becoming a shouting match?

Score by row and write the score on the board where everybody can see it. Most of the noise in a class game is not excitement, it is dispute about who was first and what the score is. Remove the dispute and the volume halves.

Can I use these for a mixed-ability class?

Every game below has a variation line, and most of them can be made easier by putting the words on the board before you start and harder by taking them off. In a mixed class, board the words, and let the pupils who do not need them not look.

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Classroom Management

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Back to English Classroom Games