This game is incredibly fun for students of all ages because it allows you and your students to have a good discussion about grammar.
Before the game, brainstorm several sentences that have one verb in the sentence – be it linking verb or helping verb or action verb, there should be one main verb that is the predicate of the sentence.
On your list of sentences, take a note of how many words are in each separate sentence. When it is time to play the game, each turn is played sentence-by-sentence. Using paper and a bold marker (big enough that all students sitting at their desks can see the words clearly), write one of the sentences such that there is one word on each piece of paper.
Bring the number of students to the front of the room so that there all of the words of the sentence are represented. Mix up the papers, and have each student take a word. Tell them to organize themselves in a sentence in a line in front of the class, holding their papers out for their classmates to see. Then say to your students, “If you are holding the verb, jump for joy.”
You may have a few students jump or none at all. This is a great chance for your students to begin a discussion of what a verb is and how it functions in the sentence. Students have fun playing this game and can be adapted to serve specific kinds of verbs (“Jump for joy if you are a helping verb”) or other parts of speech (nouns, adjectives, adverbs, and articles).
