Raise your hand if your childhood memories include completing a couple of pages out of your newest Mad Libs book?! This popular game debuted in 1958 as interactive short stories, where those reading the short stories were prompted to fill in the blank for words that had been omitted. The missing words or phrases would be assigned a specific category or part of speech, such as noun, verb, place, exclamation, and so on. Upon completion, the story would be read aloud. Usually, the story would end up being quite funny and somewhat nonsensical. Countless hours of entertainment were sure to be had.
Mrs. Pickett at Beck Elementary introduced her fourth-grade GATES students to this familiar favorite. It didn’t take long for them to catch on and they looked forward to completing new ones during their class visits. Of course, Mrs. Pickett knew these Mad Libs would be entertaining, however, she also knew how they could help reinforce very important grammar skills and challenge their thinking. To successfully complete Mad Libs students needed a clear understanding and working knowledge of the different parts of speech, or their finished story would not make sense.
The real challenge came when students were asked to compose their own Mad Libs. They begin with writing short stories about a topic of their choosing. They made sure their story had a clear beginning, middle, and end. When students struggled with coming up with a topic, they were encouraged to write about their favorite candy or something they ate for breakfast that morning. When writing Mad Libs, literally, anything goes!
Once students completed their short story draft, it was time to reread and decide which variables to remove. The variables would be the missing words in their Mad Libs. Because their stories were drafted in Google Docs, students highlighted the variables and identified the part of speech. Careful thought went into selecting which words would be the best variables. Students had to think through scenarios that would result in the most effective, and often humorous, outcome. After all, the fun part of Mad Libs is reading the finished story.
Using Flippity.net, students were then able to digitally publish their short stories in a Mad Libs template. Through using this templated Google Sheet, students became more versed in working in Sheets. They became familiar with the terminology used in spreadsheets, such as rows, columns, and formatting. Once the template was finalized, students published their Google Sheet to the web for sharing purposes. Since most 2nd - 5th-grade students are consistently spiraling back through grammar skills, it was a goal for completed Mad Libs to be shared with the campus.
Knowing these completed Mad Libs would be shared campus-wide was motivating for students. They were careful to spend quality time revising and editing their work because their audience was authentic and they wanted to share with pride. Revisions were made again and again as careful thought was given to the various possibilities of responses the Mad Libs may receive. They wanted to make sure the variables were descriptive and specific enough to produce an end product that would
To say these students were engaged in this work would be an understatement. Mrs. Picket said it was incredible to see her students collaborating with one another as they thought critically about the decisions they made to produce their Mad Libs. Students were bonding and building relationships through the process too. The laughter was an added bonus. Countless giggles were shared as students read aloud completed Mad Libs and shared their work with families via Seesaw. This provided them with extra practice with fluency and reading with expression.
