Stretching Sentences Game

Groups take turns adding or removing a word to improve a sentence.

Procedure

1. Give a group of 6-8 students a simple sentence.
2. Each student adds or removes one word to make it clearer or more interesting.
3. Continue around the group until the sentence is fully stretched.

Example Sentences

• He helps his father wash the car.
• The library is full of interesting books.
• They walk to school together every day.

Tips

• Write the starter sentence on the board — students need to see the original to track what has changed and notice when the sentence becomes unwieldy or loses coherence.
• Enforce one move per turn, in either direction. Students want to rewrite the whole thing at once; the one-word constraint forces precision and keeps the game moving.
• Post 5W+H questions as visible scaffolding. When a student freezes, point to a specific question: "Can you say when this happened?" rather than the unhelpful "make it better."
• Choose starters with expansion headroom: concrete present-tense actions with no modifiers yet. "The dog ran" invites many directions; a sentence already loaded with adjectives leaves nowhere to go.
• Debrief by reading the original and final sentence back-to-back: "Which words did the most work? Did any addition actually make it worse?"
• For stronger groups, ban adjectives after the first round — they can only add clauses. This pushes students toward subordination rather than stacking modifiers.