Number Words to 20: Circle the Matching Word

Six numerals between 3 and 20 are printed down this Grade 1 page, and beside each one stand three written number words on rounded chips. Only one of the three matches the numeral, and the near misses are close neighbors — a number one or two away, or ten apart — so a glance at the first letter is never enough. The child reads all three and circles the right one. Nothing has to be spelled or written: the whole task is reading, six times over.

The range matters more than it looks. Between three and twenty sit almost all of English's awkward number words: one, two and eight give the reader no help at all, eleven and twelve follow no pattern whatsoever, and thirteen and fifteen hide the roots they came from. These are words a child cannot decode their way into — they have to be known on sight, much the way sight words are — and a multiple-choice page is a low-stress way to build that recognition, because a near miss can be rejected without the child ever having to produce the correct spelling.

The sheet prints free as a PDF and takes about five minutes. Once these words are reliable, number words to 50 extends the range into the two-part compound numbers, and write the number words asks the child to produce the same words instead of picking them out of a line-up.