Madlibs

Students love jokes and humor. The best thing to get students motivated is often humor. Madlibs provide an incentive to recognize nouns, verbs, and other parts of speech. I have enjoyed working with madlibs in my classroom but have a hard time finding them easily. I have gathered a list of sites that offer madlibs to be printed out or completed online.

So you say, "Sounds great, but what is it?" Madlibs are stories where the main nouns, verbs, adjectives and other words are left out for the reader/manipulator to unknowingly insert blindly. The result is a very humerous and often silly story. Let me show an example.

noun1(animal)=cat
noun2=bird
verb1(animal action)=jump
verb2(past tense)=ran
noun3= tree
verb3(past tense)=lift
adjective1=pretty
noun4=chair
verb4(past tense)= hopped
verb5=ate

The noun1 was verb1ing at the noun2. He verb2 the noun2 repeatedly. Along came a noun3 and verb3 the noun2. A adjective1 noun4 verb4 by. The noun1, noun2, and noun3, verb5ed away.

When the nouns and verbs are put into the story the story comes out like this:

The cat was jumping at the bird. He ran the bird repeatedly. Along came a tree and lifted the bird. a pretty chair hopped by. The cat, bird, and tree ate away.

Students are often motivated to create their own funny stories after completing premade madlibs.