Ordinal numbers flash cards

Teaching notes

Sixteen ordinal numbers for saying dates, with 1st, 2nd or 3rd on the front and first, second or third on the back. The deck picks the ones that cause trouble: the irregular first, second, third, fifth, eighth, ninth and twelfth, the -teenth and -ieth endings, and twenty-first to thirty-first. It's for A1 learners who are starting to say dates and birthdays.

Drill the cards with the whole class, then ask "When's your birthday?" and have learners answer with a full date ("It's on March twenty-second"). In pairs, one learner reads a date from a calendar and the other writes it down. Print it as a matching worksheet, or switch it to Match up for a second round.