French Être Conjugation Board Game

About this resource

What's inside this resource

French Etre Conjugation Board Game - Present Tense is a one-page printable game for French language learners to practice conjugating etre verbs. Students take turns rolling a dice and moving along the board, conjugating etre in the present tense in order to advance. Land on a space and conjugate correctly to move ahead; make a mistake and lose your turn. The first player to reach FINISH wins. This back-and-forth game is an engaging small group or whole class activity to reinforce and assess students' knowledge of present-tense etre verb forms. Use it as an introductory lesson, review, or fun Friday wrap-up of the week. Etre Conjugation Board Game lets French learners build fluency with this foundational verb in an interactive, competitive way.

What's included

A one-page black-and-white printable game board of 37 numbered squares headed "le verbe être au présent"
Squares that print a subject pronoun with a blank — JE, ELLE, ELLES, IL, VOUS, NOUS, ON, TU, ILS — for players to complete with the correct present-tense form
Squares that print a conjugated form with a blank — EST, ÊTES, ES, SOMMES, SONT, SUIS — for players to complete with a matching subject
Six instruction squares in French: Départ, Avance de 5 cases, Recule de 5 cases, Rejoue, Tu perds ton tour, Fin
A "How to play" page giving the rules, group size, what is and is not supplied, and a French–English gloss of every instruction square
An optional harder finish rule: land exactly on the last square and answer it correctly to win

Resource types: Activities, Games

In the classroom

Teaching tips & learning objectives

Learning objectives

Produce all six present-tense forms of être — suis, es, est, sommes, êtes, sont — on demand when given a subject pronoun
Work the pairing in reverse, naming a subject that agrees with a printed form such as SOMMES or ÊTES
Distinguish the forms that share a subject slot, choosing between IL/ELLE/ON for EST and between ILS/ELLES for SONT
Read and act on short French classroom instructions — Avance de 5 cases, Recule de 5 cases, Rejoue, Tu perds ton tour — without an English prompt on the board

Teaching tips

A die per group and one token per player are needed and are not part of the download; the how-to page lists both as "Not included"
Groups of two to four are the stated playing size, so a class set needs roughly one printed board for every three students
The instruction squares are printed in French only on the board itself; the English glosses sit on the how-to page, which is worth showing once before the first round
Use the optional exact-landing rule from the how-to page to stretch a short game — players must land directly on the last square and answer it correctly to win
Because squares alternate between pronoun-given and verb-given, a group that has only drilled the conjugation in one direction will stall on the reversed squares; a quick model of square 2 (____ EST) sets that up

Skills covered

Present-tense conjugation of être — players supply suis, es, est, sommes, êtes or sont for the pronoun printed on the square they land on, such as JE at square 1 and NOUS at square 9.
Subject–verb agreement in reverse — squares such as ____ SOMMES and ____ SONT print only the verb, so players must work back to a subject that agrees with it.
Discriminating between pronouns that take the same form — EST accepts il, elle or on and SONT accepts ils or elles, so the board forces a choice rather than a single memorised answer.
Reading French classroom instructions — Avance de 5 cases, Recule de 5 cases, Rejoue and Tu perds ton tour appear on the board with no English, and players act on them during the turn.
Turn-taking game play — students in groups of two to four roll a die, track their position by the numbered squares, and manage forward and backward moves.

Good to know

Questions teachers ask about this resource

What does a player actually have to say when they land on a square?

It depends on which half the square prints. Some squares give the subject and leave the verb blank — JE ____ at square 1, ELLE ____ at square 4 — so the player supplies the correct form of être. Others give the form and leave the subject blank — ____ EST at square 2, ____ SOMMES at square 19 — so the player has to name a pronoun that agrees with it.

What do the special squares written in French tell players to do?

The how-to page glosses all six: Départ is Start, Avance de 5 cases is move forward five spaces, Recule de 5 cases is move backward five spaces, Rejoue is play again, Tu perds ton tour is lose a turn, and Fin is End. On the board they appear at squares 11, 16, 21 and 29, with Départ at the opening square and Fin at the finish.

What has to be gathered before a group can play?

One die per group and one game token per player. The how-to page lists the printable board under "Game includes" and puts the die and tokens under "Not included", so those come from the classroom.