Writing sentences is a necessary skill, but one which can be boring for the students and take a lot of time for the teacher to grade, so I’ve scoured the internet for fun, useful ways for students to practice writing sentences.

Each of these sentence structure games meets my own personal list of requirements for fun classroom games.

1. Many students can participate at once, so there shouldn’t be any students just sitting around waiting for their turn.
2. These all include fast ways for teachers to give feedback. (There’s no delayed grading and returning of papers.)
3. They all include a writing component, not just speaking, so teachers can also check for spelling and punctuation issues that often go unchecked in speaking activities.
4. They’re also all fun and have been tested in my own classes, so I know they work!

I hope you find these games as useful as I do.

1. Finger Correction

*I originally found this game online somewhere and for the life of me, I can’t find the original description of the game. If this is your game, please let me know, so I can link your blog and credit you.

The game takes at least 20 minutes, but can last up to 40.

The rules might seem a little bit complicated at first, but once you’ve explained it to your students, I guarantee they’ll love it and it can be repeated over and over again with different grammar topics.

Before class use Wordwall to create a wheel of words that you want your students to use in their sentences.

Put students in small groups of two or three. Give each group a mini whiteboard, eraser, and whiteboard marker.

Now spin the wheel. When the word appears, students write a sentence on their whiteboard containing the word. When they finish, they silently hold up their mini whiteboard. You use your fingers to signal to them how many mistakes are in their sentence. Two mistakes? The teacher holds up two fingers. Five mistakes? The teacher holds up five.

If there are no mistakes, give the students a thumbs up. The group can put one point at the top of their whiteboard, erase their first sentence, and start writing another.

Give the students a few minutes to write as many correct sentences as they can.

Then roll the wheel and do another round.

When you feel your students have had enough practice, end the game, students count up their points and a winner is decided.

*Notes on this game:

1. If you don’t have access to Wordwall, you can have students pull words out of a hat, make your own spinner using a magnet, or you can roll a dice to choose a word from a list on the board.
2. To practice different skills you can give the students different rules, such as their sentences must be interrogative, past tense, or conditional.
3. I often give a minimum number of words per sentence (7 is a good number), otherwise students will just write very short sentences.
4. I don’t accept sentences that are too similar to the ones students just wrote. (“I bought a teddy bear on Monday,” cannot be changed to “I bought a big fish on Monday,” for a second point. However, “I saw my best friend on Friday,” would be fine.)
5. You can also make multiple Wordwall wheels if you want. For example, I’ve played with three wheels before. One wheel was the number of words per sentence, one wheel was to decide if the sentence would be positive/negative/interrogative, and one wheel gave a vocabulary word for students to incorporate.

The reason this game works so well is that students can really manage themselves with minimal teacher intervention. It also gives them LOTS of practice with whatever topic you’re working on.

2. Mixed Up Sentences

This game lasts about 20 minutes.

This game also uses mini whiteboards. Put the students into small groups and hand out the boards, markers, and erasers – one per group.

Before class, prepare a PowerPoint or Google Slides with mixed up sentences. Embed a very short timer into each slide of the PowerPoint. When you open the slide with the mixed up sentence, play the timer.

Students must write the sentence correctly in the allotted time. Those that succeed get to put a point at the top of their whiteboard. The teams that were too slow or who didn’t do it correctly don’t get a point.

Repeat with each new slide.

At the end, the team with the most points win.

3. Mixed Up Sentences in Envelopes (or Cups)

This game lasts about 15 minutes, but can last more depending on how many sentences there are.

This is the same concept as the last game, but is more active for those students who can’t sit still.

Write the sentences you want the students to practice onto slips of paper. Cut up the sentences, mix up the words, put them into envelopes (or cups), put the envelopes in various locations around the room.

Make sure to write the sentence number on each or envelope (or cup), so if you have 6 sentences, write Envelope 1, Envelope 2, etc. Also put a number above each envelope’s location around the room, so Envelope 1 should be under the number 1 somewhere in the room.

Now put students into small groups of two or three. Give each group some paper (scrap paper or a notebook page is fine). Have them number the paper according to how many envelopes you have.

Now assign one runner and one writer (a third student can be the “helper/checker”). The runner has to walk to an envelope, pick it up, bring it back to his group, who tries to take out the sentence and put it in the right order. Then the writer writes the sentence on their piece of paper next to the correct number. Then the runner returns the envelope to the correct place before getting another envelope.

Make sure students know they can only take one envelope at a time. Also, they cannot help other groups. All groups must get and return their own envelopes.

The first group to finish all of their sentences (correctly, of course) is the winner.

4. Running Dictation

This classic game lasts about 15 minutes.

This game is the same as number three, but instead of mixing up sentences in cups, just write the sentences on slips of paper (don’t bother mixing up the sentences), number them, and post them around the room.

Students who are runners must go and read the sentence, memorize it, and return to their groups to tell them what to write. The first group to write all the sentences correctly wins.

Make sure to tell students to whisper the answers to their groups to cut down on noise and also to keep other groups from overhearing the sentences.

If you want to make it more challenging, you can leave key vocabulary words blank or leave verbs in the simple form, forcing students to conjugate them.

5. Find the Colored Paper

This game requires more set-up than I usually like, but the end result is a fun fast-paced game that students really like and with the extension activity, it’s worth the effort.

With the extension activity, this game lasts about 20 minutes.

Count how many groups you are going to have in your class. This works best with groups of 2-4 students. However many groups you have should be the number of sentences you’ll write.

Let’s say you have a class of fourteen students, so you’ll have seven groups. You will need seven sentences. Take seven different colors of paper. Using a black marker, write one sentence on each colored paper. Make sure to write your words large. Also make sure each sentence has the same number of words to be fair. Each sentence should be different.

For example, when I was practicing present continuous for future, I used these sentences for my class of fifteen students who were going to be in groups of three. Each sentence has seven words.

1. I am flying a kite on Sunday.
2. She’s reading a book after school today.
3. We are studying before we go home.
4. They’re going bowling with their new friends.
5. We are meeting at school this Thursday.

I wrote each of those sentences on a different colored paper. Then I cut up each paper into the seven words.

When you get to class, put tape or blu tack onto the back of each piece of colored paper, and then hide them all over the room.

Then write the numbers of the sentences on the board with the colors, so the board should say 1-blue, 2-green, 3-orange, etc. Leave enough space under each number/color for students to stick their sentences.

Assign each group a color and a number. Now you’re ready to play. Students all run and find their words. Then they run to the board and put the sentences together correctly. First group to finish their sentence is the winner, but allow all groups to finish before stopping.

(If you want this to be less chaotic, you can assign some students to stay at the board and others to be the “finders,” but chaos is part of the charm of this game.)

When students are done check their sentences together as a class and announce winners.

To extend this game, now have students close their eyes. Pull random words off the board. Have students open their eyes. Choose a student to read the sentences including the missing words. Repeat this several times.

Students will have these sentence patterns down pat!

6. One Letter at a Time dictation

This game lasts from 5-20 minutes depending on how many sentences you do and whether you let students dictate their own sentences later.

Tell students how many sentences they will need to write and have them number a paper accordingly.

Now read your sentences to the students, but only one letter at a time. For example, “I have a horse,” would be read, “IHAVEAHORSE.”

After each sentence, have students tell you what the sentence is.

To extend this game, students can write and dictate their own sentences to the class or to a partner.

7. Correct the Sentence Mistakes

This game lasts 15-20 minutes.

Each group of students will need a whiteboard, marker, and eraser.

Make a set of Google Slides or a PowerPoint where each slide has a sentence with some errors in it. Insert a timer onto each slide.

Reveal the first slide. Students must write the sentence correctly before the timer runs out. If they do it, their team gets a point.

Repeat for all the slides. At the end count up the points and declare the winner.

Honorable Mentions

1. Back-to-the-Board can be a quick sentence structure review game. Simply write a sentence behind two students who are standing at the board. Instruct the other students to mime the sentence for the two students at the board. The miming students cannot talk. The first student to say the sentence correctly wins.
2. Wordwall has a sentence scramble game that can be used in classes which have access to iPads/laptops. It’s called Unjumble.
3. I’m not a huge fan of the Dictogloss. I want to like them, but I often find my students get frustrated with them easily. However, if you can get them to work, obviously it’d be a great way to practice writing sentences. If anyone has tips for making Dictoglosses fun and functional, let me know!

If you have any other sentence writing games for practicing structure, please let me know in the comments below.

If you want to play more fun ESL games, try these awesome “time-killing” games that work for any class.