Primary English Proofreading Practice: 20 Sentences with Answers (P2–P3)

Looking for proofreading practice you can use tonight? Below are 20 sentences for P2 and P3, each with exactly one mistake for your child to find and correct. The answers, with a short explanation of each mistake, come after the sentences — so you can cover them up and check afterwards.

The sentences use the mistake types children meet most at this level: verb agreement, tenses, plurals, capital letters, prepositions, pronouns and, for P3, punctuation. If you’d like to know what each grade covers, see English proofreading by grade.

How to use these sentences

• Do five at a time, not all twenty. Five sentences is about five minutes at P2.
• Ask for the correction, not just the word. Your child should say or write the correct form: have → has.
• Ask “why?” once per sentence. Any true reason counts: “because it’s only one brother.”
• Don’t use red for wrong guesses. Circle the right answers instead.

If your child gets stuck, give a hint rather than the answer: “check the last word”, or “is it one or more than one?”. The four-step checking routine explains these hints in more detail.

Try it now: read sentence 1 aloud together and ask your child to point to each word as you go.

P2 sentences (1–10)

Each sentence has one mistake. Find it and write the correct word.

1. My brother have a red bike.
2. There is three apples on the table.
3. Yesterday we play football in the park.
4. The babys are sleeping in the room.
5. Tom go to school by bus.
6. We have art on friday.
7. We eat lunch in twelve o’clock.
8. Him likes ice cream.
9. Mum is makeing a cake.
10. I saw three foxs at the zoo.

P3 sentences (11–20)

These add punctuation and more verb forms. Each sentence still has one mistake.

11. Where do you live.
12. We goed to the beach last Sunday.
13. Does your sister likes cats?
14. I bought eggs milk and bread.
15. She didnt finish her homework.
16. Do he play the violin?
17. My dad will cooks dinner tonight.
18. Yes I would like some water.
19. The boy hurt herself on the slide.
20. We play the basketball after school.

Before you check: ask your child which sentences they were sure about and which were guesses. Guesses tell you what to practise next.

Answers and explanations (P2)

1. have → has. One brother, so has (he has).
2. is → are. Three apples are more than one, so There are.
3. play → played. Yesterday means the past.
4. babys → babies. A word ending in consonant + y changes to -ies.
5. go → goes. Tom is one person (he), so the verb takes -es.
6. friday → Friday. Days of the week start with a capital letter.
7. in → at. We use at with clock times: at twelve o’clock.
8. Him → He. The person doing the action is He, not Him.
9. makeing → making. Drop the final e before adding -ing.
10. foxs → foxes. Words ending in x add -es.

Answers and explanations (P3)

11. live. → live? It’s a question, so it ends with a question mark.
12. goed → went. Go is irregular: the past is went.
13. likes → like. After does, the verb has no -s: Does your sister like…?
14. eggs milk → eggs, milk. Use a comma between items in a list.
15. didnt → didn’t. The apostrophe shows the missing letter: did not → didn’t.
16. Do → Does. With he, she or it, questions use Does.
17. cooks → cook. After will, use the base verb: will cook.
18. Yes I → Yes, I. Put a comma after Yes or No at the start of an answer.
19. herself → himself. The boy hurt himself.
20. the basketball → basketball. We say play basketball, with no the, for sports.

What the mistakes tell you

Once you’ve checked the answers, look at which ones your child missed. They usually cluster:

• Missed 1, 2, 5, 13 or 16? Verb agreement — matching the verb to who. Practise asking “one or more than one?” before every verb. GrammarEasy’s guide to subject–verb agreement explains the rule for parents.
• Missed 3, 12 or 17? Verb forms and time. Ask “when did it happen?” and look for time words like yesterday and last Sunday.
• Missed 4, 9 or 10? Spelling with endings — these follow rules, so they improve quickly with a little practice.
• Missed 6, 11, 14, 15 or 18? Capitals and punctuation. These are usually habit, not understanding: add the “check the edges” step (first word, last word, names) to every sentence.
• Missed 7, 8, 19 or 20? Words that have to fit together (at + clock time, he not him, play + sport). These take more exposure; read them aloud so the right version starts to sound right.

Pick one group and practise only that for a week. Children improve faster on one type at a time than on everything at once. If the same kinds keep slipping through, why children miss mistakes in proofreading questions looks at the usual reasons.

Making your own practice sentences

You can write more sentences like these yourself. Take a correct sentence from your child’s reader and change one thing:

• remove the capital from a name or day,
• change is to are (or the reverse),
• remove the -ed from a past verb next to yesterday,
• remove the s after a number.

Check that only one thing is wrong, and that there is only one way to correct it. Sentences with two possible answers frustrate children and make the practice less useful.

Frequently Asked Questions

Are these sentences suitable for P1?

Sentence 6 is, as capital letters for days start in P1. Most of the others are P2–P3 level. For P1, practise capital letters, full stops, a / an and plurals after numbers.

My child found the mistake but wrote the wrong correction. Does it count?

In most school marking, both finding and correcting are needed for full marks. At home, praise the find and then work out the correct form together — finding it is the harder half.

Can I print these sentences?

Yes, for your own family’s practice. Cover the answers before printing, or print only the two sentence sections.

How often should we practise proofreading?

Short and often works best: five sentences, three or four times a week. Before a test, mix sentences from different mistake types so your child doesn’t know what to expect.

What if my child says a sentence has no mistake?

Every sentence in this set has one mistake. Ask your child to point to each word and read it aloud slowly, then check the first word, the last word and any names — that usually reveals it.

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ProofreadEasy gives your child fresh sentences like these at every grade from P1 to P6: tap the mistake, choose the correction from three options, collect stars, and read an explanation of every mistake in your own language. Coming soon to the App Store — see how it works.