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Grade 7 English Classroom Games

Eight games for a Grade 7 class, each tied to what this grade is actually learning: telling what happened - the past simple and continuous, adverbs, giving instructions, and talking about the future.

  • Grade 7
  • Classroom games
  • No equipment
  • Large classes
  • Free

What a Grade 7 class needs from a game

Grade 7 is where a pupil stops listing and starts narrating. I went to the shop becomes I was going to the shop when it started to rain, and that second sentence is a real achievement: it has a background, an interruption, and a sense of time.

The games below are built around that. Several of them are stories built in turns, because a story built by a row teaches the shape of a narrative faster than any explanation of it - the pupil whose sentence does not fit is told so immediately, by the four people sitting behind them.

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 story in five verbs

  • Time 8 minutes
  • Learners work Rows as teams
  • You need None

Language Past simple, including irregular verbs

  1. Board five verbs in the base form: go, see, run, fall, find.
  2. Each row writes a short story using all five in the past tense, in any order. Five minutes, one sheet passed along so each pupil writes one sentence.
  3. Rows read their stories out. A point for each verb used correctly in the past, and a point if the story actually makes sense.
  4. Board the irregular forms that went wrong - runned, falled - without naming the row, and fix them together.

Variation Harder: the verbs must be used in the order given, which forces the story to be planned rather than improvised.

Large class One sheet per row is the whole mechanism. Without it two pupils write everything and the other seven watch, which is the commonest way a good game fails in a big class.

2 How did he do it?

  • Time 6 minutes
  • Learners work Whole class, one pupil acting
  • You need None

Language Adverbs of manner: slowly, angrily, carefully, quietly, happily

  1. Board eight adverbs. A pupil comes out and you whisper an adverb to them.
  2. Give them an ordinary action - open the door, write your name, walk to the window - and they do it in the manner of the adverb.
  3. The class guesses in a full sentence: He opened the door angrily.
  4. Three or four pupils, then let the class set the actions as well as guess the adverbs.

Variation Harder: the adverb is not on the board, so the class must supply the word as well as the sentence.

Large class One actor, forty-four guessers, and the full sentence is what makes the forty-four work. Choose actors from different rows or the same four pupils will volunteer every time.

3 The witness

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

Language Past continuous for background, past simple for the event, and question forms

  1. Tell the class that something happened in the school at eleven o'clock yesterday - a window was broken, say - and that everybody is a witness.
  2. Each pupil writes two sentences: what they were doing at eleven, and one thing they saw. I was eating my lunch. I saw a boy running.
  3. In pairs, they question each other: What were you doing? Who did you see? What was he wearing?
  4. Take four witnesses for the whole class to question, and let the class decide whose account was most useful and why.

Variation Harder: two of the witnesses are told privately to contradict each other, and the class must find the contradiction.

Large class Everybody writes, everybody questions a partner, four are questioned publicly. The contradiction variation is worth the extra minute because it makes forty-five pupils listen to every answer.

4 The recipe muddle

  • Time 7 minutes
  • Learners work Pairs
  • You need Six instructions on the board, out of order

Language Imperatives and sequence words: first, next, then, after that, finally

  1. Board six steps of something the class knows how to do - making tea, making a paper boat - in the wrong order.
  2. Pairs write the correct order and add a sequence word to each step.
  3. Take the order from one pair, and ask another whether any step could reasonably come somewhere else. Usually one could, and that argument is the best part.
  4. Then each pair writes three steps of a different process for another pair to order.

Variation Harder: one step is missing altogether and the pairs must work out what it is.

Large class Everything on the board, nothing handed out, pairs side by side. The pair-to-pair exchange at the end needs no movement if they simply swap books with the pair behind.

5 Catch the wrong verb

  • Time 6 minutes
  • Learners work Whole class
  • You need None

Language Past simple forms, especially irregular ones

  1. Tell a short story aloud, deliberately putting four wrong verb forms in it: Yesterday I goed to the market and buyed three mangoes.
  2. The class claps or raises a hand the moment they hear a wrong form, and the pupil who catches it says the correct one.
  3. Keep the story moving; do not stop for a long correction.
  4. At the end, ask the class how many mistakes there were, and see whether they agree. They rarely do, which is the point.

Variation Harder: put in one mistake that is not a verb at all, and see whether anybody notices.

Large class The whole class listens to one voice, so size makes no difference. Deliberately mispronounce nothing - only the grammar is wrong, or you teach a pronunciation error by accident.

6 Better, worse, best

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

Language Comparatives and superlatives, including irregular ones

  1. Name two things the class has opinions about - cricket and football, town and village, morning school and afternoon school.
  2. Each row writes three sentences comparing them and one superlative sentence. Four minutes.
  3. Rows read out. A point for each correct comparison, two for a superlative used correctly.
  4. Then take a vote on the comparison the class found most convincing, and ask why.

Variation Harder: ban good and bad, which forces adjectives the class has to reach for.

Large class Rows write simultaneously so the whole class is producing language for four solid minutes. Reading out takes two more, which is the right balance for a forty-minute period.

7 What will happen

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

Language Will for prediction, and I think... will...

  1. Give the class five things to predict: the weather tomorrow, who will win the next big match, what the class will be doing at this time next year.
  2. In pairs they make one prediction each, in a full sentence with I think.
  3. Collect a few, and write two of them in the corner of the board with the date.
  4. Come back to those two predictions when the day arrives. A class that has seen its own prediction proved right remembers the form.

Variation Harder: add because to each prediction, which turns a guess into an argument.

Large class The board corner is the trick. It costs nothing, and returning to it weeks later is the strongest piece of teaching in this game.

8 The adjective ladder

  • Time 6 minutes
  • Learners work Rows
  • You need None

Language Adjectives of degree: warm, hot, boiling - and precision of word choice

  1. Board a weak adjective: big.
  2. Each row builds a ladder of adjectives from weakest to strongest, one word per pupil, spoken down the row: big, large, huge, enormous.
  3. A row may challenge another row's order, and must say why. The argument is the lesson.
  4. Do three ladders - big, cold, nice - and keep the best ladder from each on the board.

Variation Harder: start from a strong adjective and go downwards, which is much more difficult.

Large class Rows build simultaneously and then compare, so the whole class is thinking rather than waiting. The challenge rule is what makes them listen to the other rows.

Questions teachers ask

When should I use the past continuous rather than the past simple?

The distinction the class needs is that the continuous is the background and the simple is the event: I was walking is the scene, I saw is what happened. Do not teach it as a rule about duration - pupils apply that rule wrongly for years. The witness game below makes the distinction do real work, which teaches it better than a definition.

My class is noisy during games and the next teacher complains.

Two things fix nearly all of it: score by row rather than individually, and use a stopping signal you have practised when nothing was at stake. It is also worth telling the teacher next door what you are doing and why - a period of purposeful noise is easier to accept when it is not a mystery.

Can I use the same game twice?

Yes, and you should. A game the class already knows needs no explanation, so the second time you get eight minutes of language instead of five minutes of instructions and three of language. Change the content, not the game.

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Printable Flashcards and Classroom Games

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Classroom Management

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Back to English Classroom Games