7 activities to practise pronouns with kids

Through our teaching experiences, we sometimes face some situations when it becomes quite time consuming and difficult to teach kids how to use pronouns properly. There are some cases when students do not understand them because they have not studied this topic in their mother tongue at school, for example, personal pronouns ‘he/she’. On the other hand, some other cases have proven that children just don’t find pronouns ‘interesting’ or ‘funny’ enough to deal with. Taking these facts into consideration we have come up with some ideas and fun activities that you can use to practice pronouns in primary school making the process more entertaining.

Using “he” or “she” in short phrases or sentences

I suggest we start with ‘he/she’. Here you will need flashcards with different actions. Place the flashcards in front of your students and ask them the questions, like “Who is walking?”. Get them to give answers using “he/she”. Once they have practised these short phrases, then you can go on further and ask them to describe the pictures using personal and possessive pronouns. For example: “He is riding his bike”, “She is reading her book”, etc.

Introduce yourself

Get your students to introduce themselves and speak about their families using appropriate pronouns. If necessary, you can provide them with a sample.

I am your teacher. My name is Julie. I am from London. I live with my family — my husband and my two kids. My husband’s name is Mark. He is 32 years old. My daughter’s name is Annabelle. She is 2 years old. My son’s name is Brian. He is 1 year old. I love them very much.

Drawing/making flowers with pronouns

When you are done explaining the rules and introducing personal pronouns, you can ask your students to draw or make flowers with different pronouns indicating relatives’ or friends’ names the pronouns refer to. Here are some amazing examples that will definitely come in handy.

Replace the pictures with pronouns

Distribute short stories to your students with pictures in them. Ask your kids to read the story replacing pictures with appropriate pronouns. Here is one example.

Make up a story

Choose appropriate pictures that illustrate a lot of different things and people. Get your students to describe the picture or invent a short story using as many pronouns as possible.

A sample:

There are 6 people in this picture. They are in the park. A girl is sitting under the tree. She is reading a book. It is a small book. On the left side, there is a small boy. He is playing with his ball. It is yellow. Next to the boy, there are three people. They are walking in the park.

Board games with pronouns

There are so many things that can be done with board games. Since this game is played in pairs and there is always competition, children never get bored. You can either create your own board games or download from the Internet. There are plenty of different board games on Pinterest.

Pronoun dice

The last but not the least is the activity called “Pronoun dice”. You can make the dices yourself. Get your students to work in pairs and to roll the dice. They have to make one sentence with the personal pronouns they have. To expand the game, you can also ask them to make one more sentence with the corresponding object pronouns ( I — me, you — you, he — him, she — her, etc).

Well, these were some activities that I personally use in my classes. They always work perfectly and children really enjoy them. Let us know in the comments what other involving activities you use to practise pronouns.