Mad Libs Madness

Do you remember Mad Libs? They're the word games you might have played as a kid--the ones where you randomly came up with verbs, nouns, etc. and then plugged them into a pre-written story. The results were always strange, sometimes confusing, and often hilarious. I adapted the game for the classroom, and it worked really well. The students had a lot of fun, and it actually combined comprehension, vocabulary, and fluency.

We're studying descriptive words, so I decided to make up a few Mad Libs of my own to give to the students. We did one together, first. I asked the students for words that described sounds, smells, sights, emotions, etc. Then we plugged them into a story about a guy who goes over to his friend's house for dinner. The students laughed at the story "they'd written" and asked to "Do it again!" I was more than happy to oblige.

This time, I passed out a list of word prompts to each student and told them to make their own list of words. When they could show me they were done, I gave them the story part (about a blind date) and had them fill in the blanks. The students then read their stories to each other a few times, and a few volunteers read for the whole class.

Yes, the students practiced the concept of "descriptive words", and, yes, they worked on vocabulary. But I didn't predict how well the fluency aspect would work. The more confident students volunteered to read their stories for the whole class first, as I expected. But, because the stories are basically the same--with just a few key words changed--the other students ended up reading along with the story silently as their classmates read aloud. By the time the story had been read three or four times, even my shy students felt confident about trying the story themselves. And, because the stories were always slightly different and very funny, the students really paid attention to each other.

I could see this activity working for ESL, English, and even composition classes, as well as reading. I have to admit...I haven't laughed that much in a long time!