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Regular & Irregular Plural Nouns Game: Change Your Socks!

June 25, 2018

Are you looking for a fun review game to play with your ELLs this week? Try our Fun Grammar Lesson on Regular & Irregular Plural Nouns. Then do a bit more practice with this silly sock game!

You will need

  • a long piece of string and a place to hang it in the class
  • four clothes pegs
  • one long pair of matching socks (plain white or black)
  • two long crazy socks (mismatched)
  • flashcards with singular nouns, such as banana, flower, toy, table, candy, butterfly, kiss, box, watch, dish, potato, tomato, cactus, child, person, car, flower, loaf, leaf, foot, dog, deer, goose, apple, book, tree, tooth, pillow, t-shirt, sheepcat
  • blank strips of paper (the same amount as you have flashcards with images)
  • a pen or marker

Setting things up

  1. Make a flashcard set of nouns (include ones that have irregular plural endings, such as the ones from ESL Library’s Regular & Irregular Plural Nouns lesson).
  2. Place the flashcards inside a container or envelope.
  3. Hang up the string (where students can reach).
  4. Hang the regular socks beside each other on the string.
  5. Hang up the irregular socks beside each other in another area on the string.
  6. Place the blank strips of paper and pen on a table or ledge near the socks.

Playing the game

Invite students to take turns going up to the front of the class. Here is what each student will do:

  1. Choose a flashcard from the envelope/container and write the singular word on the board.
  2. If the plural of this noun has a regular ending (where you only need to add -s), stuff the flashcard into one of the regular socks and write the plural word on the paper strip. Put this strip into the other regular sock.
  3. If the plural of the noun has an irregular ending, stuff the flashcard into one of the mismatched socks and write the irregular plural form on a paper strip and put it in the other mismatched sock.

If anyone in the class thinks the flashcard and plural form went into the wrong socks, they should shout out Change Your Socks! If the teacher agrees, have the student try again. (Watch as the student writes the plural form in case it’s wrong. Help make spelling corrections or go over all spelling corrections at the end, by pulling out the strips one at a time.)

If nobody notices an incorrect placement, you the teacher should yell Change your socks! Continue until all of the flashcards are gone and the socks are full! Make a new flashcard set as you learn new nouns and plurals and play another round another day.

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Comments (4)

Maria Del Pilar G.(Teacher)

sounds cool, however is there any idea to play it online?

Reply to Comment

Lei Kayanuma(Author)

Hello Maria, great questions! Perhaps a possible way to play this online is if you are synchronously teaching your students through a platform such as Zoom or Google Meet.

You could have all of the materials (i.e. socks and pieces of paper) hanging up behind you with a container of all the flashcards in front of you. You could then pick a flashcard and show it to each student, where they can type it in the chat or write and show on a piece of paper the singular and correct plural ending. The student can then let you know which sock to put it in!

I hope you can try this! Good luck :)

Veronica V.(Teacher)

This is a great idea! thanks for sharing! it could easily be modified to be played online. You just need to make the presentation in a platform like MIRO board and your students will be able to drag the word to the socks!!

Reply to Comment

Tanya Trusler(Author)

Great idea, Veronica! Thanks for sharing.

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