ESL Activities and Games | Teaching personal pronouns
Grammar | 60 - 90 minutes
An A2 level ESL lesson plan for teaching personal pronouns. It includes a lead-in activity, several classroom activities and games, and a collection of free resources from around the web.
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Use of the board
The board work below highlights one way to review personal pronouns for students at this level. Start off by writing a sentence on the board that contains a subject, object and possessive pronoun. Have the students identify each of these and highlight it on the board. Finally, as the colour-coded text suggests, the students will work in groups to complete all of the object and possessive pronouns.
Activities
An interesting sentence
For this writing activity, students will work in groups to come up with example sentences for object and possessive pronouns.
If you have pre-taught the target grammar on the board, have the students work in groups of 3-4 to create sentences that utilise this language. Encourage them to try and combine them like the example sentence from the board work. Add a few more examples to help them.
Swap out
Students have to rewrite statements using personal pronouns.
Start by adding the following sentences to the board:
1. John likes Mark and Peter's dog.
2. The freezer is broken.
3. Claire and I are going to visit Connor tomorrow
4. That car is Emma's
5. My dad gave my brother and I some money.
6. Arsenal is a really good team.
Work out the solution to the first sentence on the board with the class. Try to elicit the correct answer from your students.
E.g. 1) He likes their dog.
Party time
A writing activity where the students practise using the target language when talking about a past event.
Tell your students that they are going to write about the most recent birthday party that they attended. Before they start, elicit some of the questions that they would expect to answer and write them on the board:
Who's birthday was it?
How old was he/she?
Where was it?
Who was there?
What present did you get him?
What presents did he get?
Games
Dice: Personal pronouns
Teams have to make a funny sentence using elements that have been decided by the throw of the dice.
You'll need dice or dice app on your phone (There are plenty of free ones out there.). Divide the class into two teams and make three lists of 6 random subjects, objects, and possessive pronouns and number them. Also, add a list of 6 random verbs and number them.
On each turn, you'll roll the dice four times and mark the numbers on the board. The teams must come up with a funny sentence that uses as many of the pronouns as possible, along with the verb.
Give one point for each correctly placed pronoun and a bonus point to the team with the funniest sentence. Set a time limit based on the ability of the class.
More A2 ESL lesson plans for elementary students
If you've found these ideas useful, have a look our complete list of ESL lesson plans for elementary level students, A2 lower and A2 upper. For other levels, see our entire collection of ESL lesson plans. Our suggested next lesson is on the past simple and past continuous.
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