Pronoun Worksheet for Class 1
He, she, it, they: three free printable PDFs with answers
A pronoun is a word that takes the place of a naming word. Class 1 children learn seven of them: I, we, you, he, she, it and they. Instead of saying Meera has a bag. Meera likes the bag, we say Meera has a bag. She likes the bag. Use he for a boy, she for a girl, it for a thing or an animal, and they for more than one.
The three free worksheets below practise all seven, one A4 page each, and every answer key is further down. Sheets 1 and 2 cover the same ground with different sentences, so you can practise twice in a week, and sheet 3 steps up to I, we and you. A written sheet tells you whether the rule has landed. It cannot tell you whether your child can read the same sentence aloud, which is a separate skill and the one Class 1 is really built on.
No sign-up. Answer keys are further down this page.
- A pronoun is a word that stands in for a name. Class 1 needs seven: I, we, you, he, she, it and they.
- Teach the choice as questions, not a list. One or many? A person or a thing? A boy or a girl? Three questions get a child to the right pronoun every time.
- Saying he for a girl is the slip parents notice most often in Indian homes, because several Indian languages do not mark boy or girl in the pronoun itself. It is a habit carried across from the first language, not a gap in understanding.
- A filled blank is not the same as a read sentence. Ask your child to read two finished lines aloud and you will learn more in one minute than the whole page told you.
What a pronoun is, in Class 1 words
Your child has already met naming words: Ravi, Meera, bag, cat, school. A pronoun is the next idea sitting right on top of that one. It is a word we use so we do not have to say the name again.
Say this out loud and your child will hear the problem immediately:
- Ravi has a bat. Ravi likes the bat. Ravi plays with the bat every day.
- Ravi has a bat. He likes it. He plays with it every day.
The second one sounds like a person talking. That is the whole lesson. A pronoun takes the place of a naming word, and Class 1 uses seven of them.
| Pronoun | Who or what it stands for | Example |
|---|---|---|
| I | Myself, the one speaking | I have a red bag. |
| we | Myself and someone else | Amit and I ran. We ran fast. |
| you | The person I am talking to | You can sit here. |
| he | One boy or one man | Ravi is my friend. He can run. |
| she | One girl or one woman | Meera is six. She likes to sing. |
| it | One thing or one animal | The cat is fat. It sat on the mat. |
| they | More than one, of anything | Sara and Kiran came. They are here. |
Notice that six of the seven are two or three letters long. A Class 1 child can read every one of them. That is deliberate: the words are easy, the thinking is not. The work is in choosing the right one, which is what the worksheet drills.
Worth knowing: possessive words like my, your, his and their are also pronouns, and they usually arrive in Class 2. If your school has not introduced them yet, leave them out. Seven words used correctly beats twelve words half remembered.
Why we use pronouns at all
Children often learn pronouns as a rule to obey. It lands far better as a problem to solve, because the problem is one your child can hear.
Read this to them in a flat voice, exactly as written:
Anu has a doll. Anu likes the doll. Anu takes the doll to school. Anu shows the doll to Priya. Priya tells Anu that the doll is nice.
Then ask one question: does that sound like the way we talk? Most children say no straight away, and some start giggling. They have just discovered why pronouns exist, without anybody defining anything.
Now read the fixed version: Anu has a doll. She likes it. She takes it to school. She shows it to Priya. Priya tells her that it is nice.
Three things happen when a child gets this:
- Their sentences start sounding natural. Repeating a name four times is the single clearest marker of very early writing, and pronouns are what clears it.
- Their writing gets shorter and faster. A five year old writes slowly. He costs two letters, Ravi costs four, and over a page that difference is real.
- Their reading gets easier too. Storybooks at this level are full of he, she and they. A child who is unsure what those words point to loses the thread of the story even when they can decode every word on the page.
That last point is the one worth holding on to. Pronouns are not decoration. They are the thread that links one sentence to the next, and a child who misses the thread stops following the story. The naming words worksheet is the sensible thing to do first if your child is still shaky on what a noun is, because a pronoun cannot replace something they cannot spot.
How to choose between he, she, it and they
Do not hand a child a list of seven words and hope. Hand them four questions, asked in this order. It takes about a minute to teach and it works on every sentence they will meet this year.
Am I in it?
If your child is one of the people in the sentence, the answer is I or we. Just me is I. Me and somebody else is we. So Amit and I went to the park becomes We went to the park, never They went to the park. This one question clears up half the confusion in the whole topic.
One, or more than one?
More than one is always they, and it does not matter what the things are. Two boys, two girls, a boy and a girl, six cats, a pile of books: all of them are they. Teach this before he and she, because it is the only rule in the topic with no exceptions at Class 1 level.
A person, or a thing?
One thing or one animal is it. The bus, the bag, the cat, the doll, the sun: all it. A person is never it, and this is worth saying out loud once, because children who are unsure of he and she will reach for it as a safe option.
A boy, or a girl?
Only now does the he and she choice come up, and by this point it is the only decision left. A boy or a man is he. A girl or a woman is she. Practise it on real people at home, using their actual names, rather than on picture cards.
The two minute drill. Walk through the house and narrate: that is Papa, he is reading. That is Didi, she is eating. That is the fan, it is on. Those are my books, they are on the shelf. Then hand the game over and let your child narrate the next four. When they can produce their own examples, print the sheet.
Three mistakes almost every Class 1 child makes
Pronoun errors at this age are wonderfully predictable. If your child is making one of these, they are on schedule, not behind.
- Using it for a person. Meera is my sister. It is six. This usually means the child has understood that it is the general purpose pronoun, which is halfway right. The fix is a single sentence they can remember: people are never it. Say it once, then correct gently every time it comes up rather than explaining again.
- Mixing up he and she. This is the one parents ask about most, and it is very common in Indian homes. Several Indian languages, including Bengali, Tamil and Gujarati, do not mark boy or girl in the pronoun at all, and spoken Hindi often blurs it in casual speech. A child whose first thinking happens in one of those languages has no habit of choosing, so they pick one word and use it for everybody. It is a habit carried across from another language, not a misunderstanding of English, and it fades with practice rather than with explanation.
- Using they for one person. Anu is here. They can sing. Children reach for they when they are unsure whether to say he or she, exactly the way they reach for it. Go back to question 2 in the method above: how many people are we talking about? One. Then it cannot be they.
How to correct without shaming: repeat the sentence back with the right word and carry on talking. Your child said Meera lost he bag, you say oh no, she lost her bag, what happened? No pause, no lesson, no correction face. Children absorb the pattern from hearing it far faster than from being told about it.
There is a fourth problem, and worksheets hide it rather than reveal it. A child can complete a whole pronoun page by pattern matching: they see a girl's name, they write she, and they never actually read the sentence. The grammar mark looks fine and the reading underneath it may not be.
ASER 2024: 44.8% of Class 5 children in government schools could read a Class 2 level text, and that test measures reading in the regional language, not English. These are children who have been filling worksheets for years. The written work kept moving forward and the reading did not keep up with it.
So finish every sheet the same way: point at two completed sentences and ask your child to read them aloud to you. It costs a minute, uses words they have just worked with, and tells you whether the grammar is sitting on top of real reading or floating above it. Our guide to reading practice for kids covers how to build that habit, and the full Class 1 worksheet set has the other five grammar topics.
Answer keys for the three Class 1 pronoun worksheets
Every answer for all three printable sheets is below, with the reason in brackets so you can explain a wrong one in a sentence rather than just marking it. Mark each sheet together, and for anything wrong ask why they chose that word before telling them the answer. Their reason is where the real lesson is.
Worksheet 1
Exercise 1: Write he, she or it in the blank
- He can run fast. (Ravi is a boy)
- She is six. (Meera is a girl)
- It is fat. (a cat is an animal)
Exercise 2: Circle the correct word
- They are happy. (Sara and Kiran are two people)
- We had a bun. (your child is one of them, so we, not they)
- It is red. (a pen is a thing)
Exercise 3: Write each word in the right box
- he: Ravi, Dev
- she: Meera, Anu
- it: the bus, the cat
Exercise 4: Write the pronoun that takes the place of the name
- She (Priya, one girl)
- They (Ravi and Dev, more than one)
- It (my bag, one thing)
Exercise 5: One pronoun is wrong. Write the right one
- She is six. (Meera is a girl, not a boy)
- It is blue. (a bag is a thing, never she)
- She can sing. (Anu is one person, so not they)
Worksheet 2
Exercise 1: Write he, she or it in the blank
- He can swim. (Arjun is a boy)
- She likes to read. (Nisha is a girl)
- It is very big. (a bus is a thing)
Exercise 2: Write the pronoun for each picture
- boy: he (one boy)
- girl: she (one girl)
- dog: it (one animal)
- two friends: they (more than one)
- bag: it (one thing)
Exercise 3: Circle the correct word
- They won the race. (Tara and Rohan are two people)
- We were happy. (your child is one of them, so we, not they)
- It is blue. (a cap is a thing)
Exercise 4: Write the pronoun that takes the place of the name
- He (Kiran, one boy)
- They (Nisha and Tara, more than one)
- It (my dog, one animal)
Exercise 5: One pronoun is wrong. Write the right one
- He is seven. (Arjun is a boy, not a girl)
- It is white. (a cat is an animal, never he)
- He can jump. (Rohan is one person, so not they)
Worksheet 3
Exercise 1: Write I, we or you in the blank
- I am in Class 1. (Sana is talking about herself)
- We ran very fast. (Arjun and me, so we, never they)
- You can sit here. (Meera is talking to Ravi)
Exercise 2: Choose the right word from the box
- She is sad. (Nisha is one girl)
- We gave it to Ma. (Tara and your child)
- They are on the shelf. (books, more than one)
- He comes home at six. (Papa is one man)
Exercise 3: Read the story. Write the pronoun for each name
- He (Dev, one boy)
- It (a kite is a thing)
- She (Sana, one girl)
- They (Dev and Sana, two people)
Exercise 4: One pronoun is wrong. Write the right one
- we got a bun. (Nisha and I includes your child)
- he read a big red book. (Arjun is a boy)
- they can sing well. (Tara and Sana are two people)
A note on exercise 5 in worksheets 1 and 2, and exercise 4 in worksheet 3. If your child got all three of those right, they have understood the topic properly, because spotting a wrong pronoun is harder than filling a blank one. If they got exercise 1 right but the fix-it round wrong, the rule is known and the noticing is not, and that only comes from hearing sentences read aloud.
Worksheet 3 is the one to watch. Exercise 3 asks a child to hold a whole short story in their head while they choose, which is much closer to real reading than a single sentence with a gap in it. If sheet 1 and sheet 2 came back clean and sheet 3 did not, nothing has gone wrong. That gap is normal, and it is the reason we made three sheets instead of one.
The part of a pronoun sheet that no pen can mark
ZigZu is an AI Reading Coach built for Indian children aged 4 to 8. Your child reads a storybook aloud, ZigZu listens to every word, and corrects pronunciation gently in real time, in Indian English. Pronouns are exactly where this matters: he, she, it and they are tiny words carrying the meaning of a whole sentence, and a child can fill them in correctly on paper while still guessing at them out loud.
A worksheet marks what was written. It cannot hear the sentence being read. ZigZu has 200+ levelled storybooks, from first three-letter words to full chapter books, and progress reports that show you which words your child has mastered and which still need work.
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Frequently asked questions
A pronoun is a word that takes the place of a naming word. Instead of saying Ravi has a bag, Ravi likes the bag, we say Ravi has a bag, he likes the bag. The pronoun he stands in for the name Ravi. Class 1 children learn seven of them: I, we, you, he, she, it and they.
Seven: I, we, you, he, she, it and they. That is the set Class 1 works with, and it covers every sentence a five or six year old needs to write. Possessive forms such as my, your and their usually arrive later, in Class 2. Do not rush ahead to those, getting these seven solid is worth far more.
Point, do not explain. Walk around the house and say: that is Papa, he is reading; that is Didi, she is eating; that is the fan, it is on. Three examples, then ask your child for three of their own. Once they can produce their own examples out loud, the worksheet becomes practice rather than a test.
No, it is one of the most common things parents notice at this age. Several Indian languages do not mark boy or girl in the pronoun itself, so a child thinking in that pattern reaches for one word and uses it for everyone. It corrects with practice, not correction. Say the right pronoun back warmly and carry on with the sentence.
Yes. All three are free one-page A4 PDFs with no sign-up and no email address needed. Print them, and mark them using the answer keys published in full on this page. Each sheet takes a Class 1 child about ten to fifteen minutes, so you can spread the three across a week rather than doing them in one sitting.
They is for more than one: Ravi and Meera are here, they are happy. Class 1 children often use it for a single person because it feels safe when they are unsure whether to say he or she. If your child does that, ask a simple question first: how many people are we talking about, one or more?