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Grade 9 English Classroom Games

Eight games for a Grade 9 class, each tied to what this grade is actually learning: conditionals, the passive, and the difference between formal and friendly English.

  • Grade 9
  • Classroom games
  • No equipment
  • Large classes
  • Free

What a Grade 9 class needs from a game

Grade 9 is the last year before the Ordinary Level work takes over, and it is the right year for the two things O/L quietly assumes a pupil already has: the conditionals, and a sense of when English should be formal and when it should not.

The second of those is almost never taught directly, and it costs marks every year. A pupil who writes Hi sir, please send me the form in a letter to a principal has not made a grammatical mistake - they have made a judgement error, and judgement is trained by comparison rather than by rules. Three of the games below are comparisons of exactly that kind.

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 If this, then that

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

Language First conditional: if + present, will + base

  1. Give the first pupil in each row an opening: If it rains tomorrow...
  2. They complete it, then turn their result into the next condition: ...we will not have practice. If we do not have practice...
  3. The chain continues down the row, each pupil taking the last result as their new condition.
  4. A row that breaks the form starts a new chain from where it broke. Read the longest chain out at the end.

Variation Harder: the chain must return to the starting idea by the last pupil in the row, which requires the row to steer.

Large class Five chains run at once, one per row, so forty-five conditionals are produced in seven minutes. Walk between rows and listen for will after if, which is the error to catch.

2 What would you do

  • Time 7 minutes
  • Learners work Pairs, then the whole class
  • You need None

Language Second conditional: if I had..., I would...

  1. Give four situations: If you found a wallet with ten thousand rupees in it. If you could speak to anybody in the world. If your friend copied your homework. If you were principal for a day.
  2. In pairs, each pupil answers two of them in a full second conditional sentence.
  3. Take answers to the wallet one from several pupils and let the class discuss whether they agree. This is the situation that produces real argument.
  4. Board two of the best sentences and check the form together: had, not would have, in the if-clause.

Variation Harder: add unless to one situation, which is the form pupils avoid entirely unless forced.

Large class Everybody answers in a pair first, so the pupils who speak to the class have already said the sentence once. The wallet question will carry a class of any size.

3 Who did it?

  • Time 7 minutes
  • Learners work Whole class, then rows
  • You need None

Language The passive, and when the doer does not matter

  1. Board four active sentences about the school: Somebody broke the window. They painted the hall last year.
  2. Ask the class who did each one. For most of them nobody knows or nobody cares - and that is exactly when English uses the passive.
  3. Rewrite them together: The window was broken. The hall was painted last year.
  4. Then each row finds three things in the school that were done by somebody unknown, and writes them in the passive.

Variation Harder: one of the four should be a sentence where the doer does matter, so the class has to decide the passive is wrong for it.

Large class The discovery step - asking who did it and finding that nobody knows - is what makes the form meaningful, and it works better with forty-five voices than with five.

4 The process line

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

Language The passive in sequence: the rice is washed, then it is boiled

  1. Give each row a process everybody knows: making tea, printing a newspaper, building a wall, cooking rice.
  2. The row writes the process in six steps, all in the passive, one step per pupil down the sheet.
  3. Rows read out. The class guesses the process from the steps alone if the row reads them without naming it.
  4. A point for each correct passive, and a point if the class guessed the process.

Variation Harder: the row may not name the main ingredient at any point.

Large class One sheet, six steps, passed along the row - so six pupils write and the rest check. Give the checking job explicitly to the pupils who are not writing or they will simply wait.

5 Formal or friendly

  • Time 7 minutes
  • Learners work Whole class, then pairs
  • You need None

Language Register: the same meaning in two kinds of English

  1. Board one message in two versions: Sir, I am unable to attend school tomorrow as I have to accompany my mother to the hospital and sir cant come tomorrow amma is going to hospital.
  2. Ask the class what is different. They will say the second is wrong; push them past that to what it is wrong for.
  3. Then give four situations - a message to a friend, a note to a principal, a caption on a photograph, a letter asking for a certificate - and pairs write one line for each.
  4. Read some out and let the class place each one: which situation was it written for?

Variation Harder: write one line that would be wrong in every one of the four situations, which requires understanding all four.

Large class The boarded pair of messages does the teaching. Do not mark the informal one as bad English - say plainly that it is correct for one purpose and wrong for another, or the class stops trusting you.

6 The complaint desk

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

Language Polite forms: could you, would it be possible, I would be grateful if

  1. One pupil in each pair has a problem - a book not returned, a bus that never comes, a light that does not work in the classroom.
  2. They must complain to their partner using only polite forms. Board four of them first.
  3. The partner must refuse politely, twice, before agreeing to anything. The double refusal is what forces the complainer to find a second and third way of asking.
  4. Swap roles with a new problem.

Variation Harder: the complainer may not use the word please at all, which removes their one crutch.

Large class Pairs at their desks, everybody talking at once. The double-refusal rule is the whole design - without it each pair finishes in twenty seconds.

7 The missing cause

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

Language Because, so, although, however

  1. Board four results with no causes: ...so the match was cancelled. ...although he passed the examination. ...so nobody came. ...however, she did not tell anybody.
  2. Each row writes a beginning for each. Three minutes.
  3. Read them out. The interest is in how differently the rows completed the same one, and in whether although and however were used correctly - they usually are not.
  4. Fix the although and however errors together, since those two are worth more marks at O/L than the other two.

Variation Harder: the same result must be given two different causes, one using because and one using although.

Large class Four prompts, five rows, twenty sentences to read - which is about two minutes, the right length. Any more prompts and the reading round outlasts the writing.

8 Rewrite it politely

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

Language Softening: modals, questions instead of commands

  1. Board five blunt sentences: Give me your book. I want leave tomorrow. Your answer is wrong. Send the form. Come here.
  2. Every pupil rewrites all five so that they could be said to a principal.
  3. Pairs compare and choose the politer version of each, giving a reason.
  4. Board the class's best five and keep them up for the rest of the week.

Variation Harder: rewrite them a third way, for a friend, so the class sees all three registers side by side.

Large class Individual writing keeps it silent, and the pair comparison is where the judgement is trained. Leaving the five best on the board for a week is the part that actually changes their writing.

Questions teachers ask

Which conditional should I spend the most time on?

The first, by a distance. It is the one a pupil will actually use - if it rains, we will not go - and it is the one that appears most in examination papers. The second conditional is worth a game because pupils enjoy it, and the third is worth knowing exists. Do not spend three weeks on all three.

Is the passive worth teaching at this level?

Yes, but for reading before writing. Pupils meet the passive constantly in notices, instructions and textbooks - entries must be submitted by Friday - and not understanding it costs them marks in comprehension. The two passive games below are built around recognising and using it for a reason, not transforming sentences.

My pupils write the way they message each other.

That is not laziness, it is the only written English most of them use daily. The fix is not to forbid it but to make the comparison explicit and frequent: the same message written two ways, side by side, until they can feel the difference. The formal-or-friendly game does exactly that in seven minutes.

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