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Grammar?

Fun? Yes, it is possible! In fact, it’s probable. When you have these grammar games in your back pocket, you will be ready to get your students excited about grammar any day, any time.

Try These 6 Fun Grammar Games You Should Have up Your Sleeve

1

Four Corners

Are you looking for a go to game that you can use with just about any grammar exercise? Four Corners might be it. To play, simply label each corner of your room with one letter A-D. Then ask your students a question and project the four answer choices (A-D) on the front board. Students run to whatever corner marks the answer they think is right. Anyone who runs to the wrong corner is out and must sit down. If everyone is right, the last person to get to the corner is out. You can also play this game without projecting answers on the board. Simply label each corner of your room with an answer, and have students run to the correct one. This works great for verb tense reviews or prepositions and phrasal verbs where each question has the same four answer choices.
2

Charades

Charades is a typical go to for vocabulary practice, but you can use it for grammar games, too. Specifically, charades is great for practicing the present progressive tense. One student acts out a verb and the rest of the students guess the action by forming complete sentences using the present perfect tense. Want to make the game more complex? Have two students act out verbs at the same time and make the guessing students use both progressive actions in a grammatical sentence.
3

Slap

This is an easy set up game that can be as simple or as complicated as you like. To set up, write several words in large letters all over your front board. You want each word to be at least the size of your palm. Divide your class into two teams. Have one person from each team come to the front of the board and give each person a fly swatter. Read a sentence that can be completed with one of the words on the board. The first student to slap the correct word with the fly swatter scores a point for his or her team. You can tailor this game to any grammar topic simply by varying the words you write on your board. But watch out. Your students might have so much fun with this one you might need to invest in a few more fly swatters.
4

Story Boarding

Story boarding is one way to keep students from getting bored with grammar lessons. In this game, students will put several pictures in logical sequence to make a complete story. Start by gathering around ten pictures that tell a logical story. You can copy pages from a picture book, use the panels from a comic strip, or even gather pictures you take yourself. (Bonus points for you if they are pictures of your students.) Put the pictures in random order on the bottom of your front board or give the bunch of them to a group of students. (Hint: if you copy pages from a story book try sticking a simple magnet to the back of each one to make magnets you can stick to your white board.) Your students will put the pictures in the correct story telling order by telling you about them. To do so, they must talk about two pictures each time they give you an instruction. One student at a time talks and will give you directions for ordering the pictures. For example, if your pictures told of the story of “The” one student might say, “After she harvested the wheat, she ground it into flour.” You should then take those two pictures from the bottom of your board and arrange them along the top of the board in the correct order. Another student might then say, “Before she made bread, she ground the wheat into flour.” Let students take turns describing the pictures and their correct sequence until all the pictures are in the correct order. If you like, ask a volunteer to tell the whole story from start to finish.
5

Missing Punctuation Board Game

This fun and simple print and go game is perfect for reviewing punctuation in English sentences. (And who couldn’t use practice with that?) The spaces on the board have punctuation marks on them. Each player draws a card and decides which punctuation mark is missing from that sentence. He or she then moves to that punctuation mark on the board. Make the game more or less challenging by writing your own sentences, and target areas your students struggle with most. The game is designed for two players, but you could easily modify it for more than that. If you want to make the game even more challenging, have your students write the questions with the correct and missing punctuation and exchange cards with their friends before playing.
6

Roll a Sentence

For this game, each group of players will need two standard dice. You can find these in just about any store that has a toy/game section. I like to keep a class supply of dice on hand in my classroom because they are useful for so many different activities. In this game, students will roll the dice to get words which they must then use to complete a sentence with correct grammar and punctuation. The words are divided into five categories: person/thing, adjective, preposition, verb, place. Each category has eleven possible words, numbered from two to twelve. Students roll once for each column and write down the word they scored. After they have rolled five times, they must put all the words together to form one logical sentence. You can use the printable template here or make your own by making a list of items from 2-12 for each word/category you want students to include. Instead of giving students a specific verb, you could also give them a verb tense and have them choose the specific verb to complete their sentence for a great twelve tense review.