Mad:)Takes: Parts of Speech Practice

Details

Activity Description

Use the site Mad:)Takes, similar to Mad Libs, as a whole-class warm-up or filler activity, or as a parts of speech practice activity for an individual student.

Preparation

1. Make sure that the Web site is not blocked at your school.
2. Visit the Example Web Site (above) and choose a story/stories you will use with your class or that you will have students use.
3. Teach parts of speech terminology for the story/stories to be used (noun, verb, adjective, adverb, etc.).
4. If students will be working individually, decide how you want to provide the site link to your students. (See the Teacher Tips section if you need ideas on how to do this.)

How-To

1. Visit the Example Web Site (above) and select a story.
2. If doing a whole-class activity, call on students or ask for volunteers to provide parts of speech (noun, plural noun, verb, adjective, adverb, etc.) indicated on the story and type (or have students type in) the words they provide. Provide corrections/explanations if students do not provide the correct part of speech called for. You may select the Random Word button to fill in a random word from the site’s database.
3. When all the words have been entered, select the Go Mad button.
4. The story will be displayed with sharing options – e-mail, share on social networking sites, or print. (Note: As the time of writing, the e-mail function did not work properly. Instead, if you want to save the story, copy and paste the text into a word-processing document.)
5. Read the story aloud or have volunteer students read to the class or pair students to read their stories, if they have used the site to create individual stories. Can be hilarious.

Teacher Tips

• In order get students to the Web site, you can make it a Favorite or Bookmark the site on each computer browser, e-mail them the link, e-mail a word processing document with the link in it, or post the link on your class Web page.
• Many sites, like this, have advertising. Teach your students what it looks like and how to avoid selecting ads since sometimes they contain malware that they will not want on their computers, at school or at home. It is a very important and necessary skill for them to know.

More Ways

• The exercises can be printed: select the printer icon and then you can print out as a handout/paper-based activity. The site could also be used for pair work.
• There are 188 stories to choose from.

Program Areas

• ESL: English as a Second Language

Levels

• Intermediate Low
• Intermediate High
• Advanced

Documents

• ExampleMadTakesStory.doc - Example Story from Mad:)Takes: Man of My Dreams

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