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Grade 8 English Classroom Games

Eight games for a Grade 8 class, each tied to what this grade is actually learning: the present perfect, reporting what somebody said, superlatives, and writing a short notice or message.

  • Grade 8
  • Classroom games
  • No equipment
  • Large classes
  • Free

What a Grade 8 class needs from a game

Two difficult things arrive in Grade 8: the present perfect, and reporting what somebody else said. Both are usually taught as rules, practised in an exercise, and then never produced again, because neither rule tells a pupil when they would actually want the form.

The games below give each form a job. Have you ever...? is the natural way to ask about somebody's whole life, and reported speech is the natural way to pass on a message - so the games are built around finding things out and passing things on, which is when those forms are genuinely needed.

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 Have you ever

  • Time 8 minutes
  • Learners work Rows, asking the pupils nearest them
  • You need None

Language Present perfect for experience, and past simple for the detail

  1. Board six experiences: been to Colombo, eaten a durian, ridden a horse, lost something important, won a prize, slept in a train.
  2. Pupils ask the four people nearest them Have you ever...? and find one person for each.
  3. Here is the rule that makes the game teach something: when somebody says yes, the asker must follow up with When? or What happened? - and the answer to that must be in the past simple.
  4. Report back around the rows: Ishara has been to Colombo. She went last April. Two sentences, two tenses, which is the whole lesson.

Variation Harder: pupils invent their own six experiences, which must be things somebody in the room might plausibly have done.

Large class Nobody leaves their seat; the four nearest people are enough. The two-sentence report is what stops this being a vocabulary game, so insist on both sentences every time.

2 The message relay

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

Language Reported speech: he said that..., she asked whether...

  1. Whisper a short message to the first pupil in each row: I am going to the library after school.
  2. It passes down the row, but each pupil must report it rather than repeat it: the second pupil says He said he was going to the library after school.
  3. The last pupil in the row writes what reached them on the board.
  4. Compare the boarded versions with the original. The distortions are always interesting, and they are almost always the tense.

Variation Harder: use a question - Are you coming tomorrow? - which forces he asked whether, a much harder form.

Large class Rows are the relay, so five relays run at once and every pupil in the room produces a reported sentence. Start all rows together or the later ones overhear the earlier ones.

3 Since or for

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

Language Since with a point in time, for with a length of time

  1. Board two headings, since and for, and call out time expressions: 2019, three years, I was small, ten minutes, last April, a long time.
  2. The class calls out which heading each belongs under, and a pupil comes and writes it.
  3. Then each pupil writes two true sentences about themselves, one with each word: I have lived in this town since 2018. I have known Amali for six years.
  4. Pairs check each other's two sentences before any are read out.

Variation Harder: a sentence that uses both - I have been in this school for two years, since Grade 6.

Large class Sorting into two columns can be done by the whole class calling out, and the writing is individual and quiet. The pair check means forty-five sentences are corrected without you reading one of them.

4 The tallest, the oldest, the best

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

Language Superlatives, including the best and the worst

  1. Each row must produce five true superlative sentences about the room, the school or the class: Nuwan is the tallest boy in our row.
  2. Four minutes, one sheet passed along.
  3. Rows read out. Any other row may challenge a sentence as untrue, and the class settles it.
  4. A point per correct sentence, and a point deducted for a sentence successfully challenged - which makes them careful rather than fast.

Variation Harder: ban the best and the worst, which are the two the class will otherwise use five times each.

Large class The challenge rule is what keeps the other four rows listening while one row reads. Without it, a reading round in a class of forty-five is dead time.

5 The notice board

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

Language Writing a notice: what, when, where, who to contact

  1. Give a situation: the English Day competition entries close on Friday, or a lost water bottle, or a change to the cricket practice.
  2. Each pair writes a notice of no more than forty words. The limit is the lesson.
  3. Swap with the pair behind and check for the four things a notice must contain: what, when, where, and who to ask.
  4. Board the best one and cut three more words out of it together.

Variation Harder: thirty words, which forces them to drop every unnecessary phrase.

Large class Pairs swapping with the pair behind them needs no movement at all. The joint cutting at the end is done by the whole class and is the part they remember.

6 Just, already, yet

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

Language The three adverbs with the present perfect, and their positions

  1. Board the three words and one sentence: I have finished my homework.
  2. Put each word into the sentence in turn, with the class, and talk about what changes. Yet will need a negative or a question, and the class will discover that rather than be told it.
  3. Then call situations - the bell rang two seconds ago, you have not done something you should have - and the class produces the sentence with the right adverb.
  4. Finish with five sentences the class writes alone, one for each situation you name.

Variation Harder: include still, which behaves differently and is worth contrasting.

Large class The discovery about yet is the moment worth waiting for. Do not tell them; give a situation that needs it and let somebody in the room work it out.

7 The comparison debate

  • Time 9 minutes
  • Learners work Two halves of the room
  • You need None

Language Comparatives, superlatives, and because and but

  1. Give the two halves opposite sides of a plain question: Is it better to live in a town or a village?
  2. Four minutes to prepare three points each. One sheet per half, passed along, so everybody contributes a point.
  3. Each side gives its three points, alternating. No interrupting.
  4. Then each side must say which of the other side's points was the strongest - which is the hardest part and the most valuable.

Variation Harder: halfway through, swap sides, so each half must argue what it has just been arguing against.

Large class Two halves, not six teams: a debate needs enough people on a side to produce three good points in four minutes. The strongest-point rule stops it becoming a shouting match.

8 He said what?

  • Time 7 minutes
  • Learners work Groups of three, sitting together
  • You need None

Language Reporting statements, questions and requests

  1. In each three, one pupil is A, one is B, one is the reporter.
  2. A and B have a thirty-second conversation on a topic you give - what they did at the weekend, what they are doing after school.
  3. The reporter then tells the class, or the group next to them, what was said: She said she had gone to her grandmother's. He asked whether she had enjoyed it.
  4. Rotate the roles twice so everybody reports once.

Variation Harder: the reporter may not take notes, which is how reporting works in life and makes them listen properly.

Large class Threes within a row, no movement. Fifteen groups reporting to the group beside them takes two minutes, where fifteen groups reporting to the whole class would take fifteen.

Questions teachers ask

My class uses the past simple where the present perfect belongs.

So does most of the country, and it is not a catastrophe. The place to insist is where the meaning actually changes: I have been to Kandy means some time in my life, I went to Kandy means on a particular occasion. The Have you ever game below makes that difference do work, which is the only way it sticks.

Reported speech takes a whole period to explain.

Do not explain it first. Play the message relay below and let the class discover that I am coming has to become he said he was coming when you pass it on. Then name what they have just done. The rule explained after the need has been felt takes five minutes rather than forty.

How do I get the weaker pupils to write anything at all?

Give them a length limit rather than a topic: fifty words, not an essay. The notice game below works because a notice is short enough that a weak writer will start it, and the shortness is the point rather than a concession.

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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