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 some 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:

“Generators” from John’ ESL. Put your cursor over “Generators Menu.”

Word Jumble: Practicing sentence structures is from tekhnologic.

Great Tool For Creating Sequencing Activities

Word Shuffler

Paragraph Scrambler

Half A Crossword lets teachers create lots of different kinds of worksheets, including bingo, sentence scrambles, and sentence corrections. Learn more about it at Blog de Cristina.

A couple of years ago, I posted about a new site called BrainRush. It was just beginning then, and lets you created flashcard learning activities. Those, of course, are a dime-a-dozen. But what made BrainRush different was that you could create virtual classrooms and monitor student progress in mastering them. Plus, they said they would be adding more activities in the future. And, most importantly, it was free. I recently checked the site again. I saw that they have indeed added the kinds of activities you can create. Now, in addition to flashcards, you can develop sequencing activities, Buckets (a categorization interactive) and “hotspots” (a naming/placing tool). They all look good, as does the price 🙂

Feedback is always welcome.

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