Rope Trick

Purpose: To help learners practice correct word order and to build new sentences.

Preparation Time: Five to 10 minutes.

Materials: Length of clothesline or other rope, quantity of eight-and-a-half-by-eleven paper, folded in half, and markers for writing.

Preparation: Based on what your students are currently studying, choose sentences that are familiar, such as “there are three chairs in the living room” and “there is a mouse in the kitchen.”  Have a number of sentences in mind to use in modeling the activity and for initial practice.

Procedure:

1. Hang up a line where everyone can see it.
2. Fold a piece of paper in half and write a word on it on both sides of the paper.
3. Hang the words on the line to form a sentence. You can also create punctuation papers. You can stand behind the line to read it without being in the students’ way.
4. Move the words around to demonstrate question word order or how to combine sentences.
5. After the demonstration, students can write words and come up to the line to make new sentences.

Extensions:

• Create sentences first, then have students make the question form or the negative.
• Have students unscramble sentences that you make.
• Make a sentence in present tense and ask students to change the tense.