Do you want to teach kids about parts of speech, grammar, and vocabulary while having lots of fun at the same time? Then try Mad Libs! Below, you’ll find a collection of printable Mad Libs that you can download for free and use in class. We’ll also share some useful information on how you can easily make your own printable Mad Libs for your lessons. But first, for those of you not familiar with Mad Libs, let’s look at what they are and how you can use these in class.
Mad Libs is a word game that involves creating a story or paragraph by filling in missing words. The game follows a simple template where certain words, such as nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, are left blank. Players take turns suggesting words to fill in these blanks, without knowing the context of the story. Once all the words are filled in, the completed story is read aloud, often resulting in humorous and nonsensical combinations.
Playing Mad Libs in the classroom is a fun and effective way to teach students about the different parts of speech. There are several ways you can play Mad Libs in class, but here’s the one that we find works best when using printable Mad Libs.
The first step to playing Mad Libs in class is to decide which Mad Lib to use. You can choose one of the free printable Mad Libs below, or create your own Mad Lib Story (more on that below!)
Next, write a list of the words that are needed to complete the Mad Lib. For example, if you look at one of the printable Mad Libs below, you’ll see that to complete the story you’ll need words like ‘Child’s name‘, ‘a verb ending in -ing’, ‘adjective‘, etc.
Next, it’s time to elicit these words from the students. Work down the list of words that are needed to complete the story and ask students to come up with a word for each one. For example, for ‘adjective‘, students might say ‘scary‘, ‘blue‘, ‘exciting‘, etc.
Now comes the fun part! Reading the completed story! Print out the Mad Lib story and provide one to each student or pair of students. Or, if you want to save paper, you can simply display the PDF file on the screen.
Read the story together as a class, replacing the words in brackets with the words you elicited from students earlier. The story is likely to be very silly and nonsensical, which is what makes Mad Libs so much fun!
We find that when playing Mad Libs in class, using the same story a second time with different words is a lot of fun! Now that students know the story, they can be even more creative and come up with a real wacky and entertaining story. You can do this together as a class, or split the class into pairs or small teams to create a fun Mad Lib Story.
Here are some free printable Mad Libs. Each worksheet has a fun Mad Lib story with words missing. Students must come up with words to go in the blank spaces to complete the story.
