Sentence scrambles — taking a sentence and mixing up the word order — are great activities for English Language Learners and native-English speakers alike. They’re good for regular practice, and also nice for competitive games. In the classroom, students can create their own, too. I’ve often had students pick several sentences from the book they’re reading, make up cards with all the words and punctuation marks, paper-clip each sentence together (not in order), and collect them. Then, I divide students in small groups, and each group gets ten or so of them to compete to see who can complete them all first correctly.

I’ve also used them one at a time for just a break from routine, and I’ve also created some for tests. It’s easy, though, to miss including a word when you’re creating them — especially if you’re doing it late or night.

I’ve found two online scrambled sentence creators that work well. All I have to do is copy and paste some sentences and, wallah, I have them automatically scrambled into a worksheet I can print-out or copy and paste.

Here are my picks for The Best Sites For Creating Sentence Scrambles:

Sentence Scramble Generator From The Canadian Teacher

The Language Menu

Workshop Genius lets you easily create “Sentence Scrambles,” among other things.

Feedback is always welcome.

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