Giving the students the words and letting them arrange the sentence is an oldie but a goodie. This game adds some movement and the element of recall to make it more fun and competitive.
First students must remember a word, then together as a group they must assemble a sentence. Students get to move around and work in groups to solve the word puzzles.
Basic Info
| Time: | 10 - 20 minutes |
|---|---|
| Level: | Junior high grade 1 - 3 |
| Works with: | Grammar |
| Class size: | Medium to large |
You will need:
- Paper or card (card is easier and less likely to be torn during use)
- Pen or marker
- Sticky tape
- Paper for each group to write on
Preparation
- Decide on a number of example sentences. (It makes it easy for students if you keep to one grammar point.)
- Example: How do you come to school?
- Divide each sentence into 4 parts.
- Example: how / do you / come / to school
- Write each part onto 4 separate cards.
- Number the back of each card from sentence 1 with "1", and so on.
- Put one card from each sentence in north, east, south, west piles around the room.
Lesson Description
- Students get into groups. One student holds the pen (and paper).
- Call out a number.
- 4 students from each group stand and go each to a different pile of cards. They must remember the word(s) and return to the group.
- Once back in their groups, the students tell the writer the word(s) they saw. Once all words are written down, the group then sets about arranging them to make a grammatically correct sentence.
- Once arranged, they raise their hands and you go and check their answer.
Tips
- Give points to the first teams to complete the sentences.
- Alternative to piles of cards, tape the cards to the wall. Post the words up around the class either before the lesson starts or while the main teacher is doing something else with the students.
Variations
- You can also do this without making the students stand up and walk around the room. Simply type up the sentences on a PC, copy and paste, print and start cutting.
Put each bundle of words into a separate envelope and mark the envelope with the sentence number. Either each group can have their own envelope for each example (in which case you have to do a lot of cutting and organizing) or you can just have one envelope for each example sentence and have each group work on a different number at the same time.
Make sure you have at least one more envelope than the number of groups. You may only require each group to do 5 of the 8 envelopes (for example) so there is no waiting for a group to finish with the last envelope they haven't done. - This can also be done individually as a worksheet.
Warnings
- Make sure the example sentences aren't too difficult.