Personal Pronouns

Eight cards sit two to a row on this 1st grade page. Each shows a picture of one person or two, a name card underneath — Ava and Zoe, Anna, Ben, Tom and Leo, Max and Mia, Lily, Jack, Eli on the sheet shown — and three chips reading he, she and they. The child reads the name and circles the word we would use in its place. Four of the eight cards name one person and four name two, and one of the pairs is a boy and a girl.

Substitution is the idea, and naming the people is what makes it teachable: a pronoun is defined here as the word that goes where the name went, not as a part of speech. Putting a mixed pair on the page matters, because they is often learned as the word for two girls or two boys and then fails at the first mixed couple. The pictures support the names but do not decide the answer — the name card does.

One sheet, eight cards, eight circles. This is the base page of the pronouns family and the only one that asks nothing but a choice, which makes it the right first meeting. The replace-the-name and sort-the-names faces take the same three words into writing; the possessive face changes them to his, her and their.