This maybe a well known game and here somewhere but i thought i would share it anyway as it maybe help to someone.
I have found the ladders game to be useful in the classroom when i have been trying to teach sentences and getting the students to think about and speaking the sentences.
The game its self was taught to me at brownies (called the shopping cart game); children sit in 2 rows facing each other, with their legs outstretched and their feet flat against their partners in the opposite row (so that they look like a ladder, make sure there is a little space between rungs though); Label the rows team 1 and team 2; then give each rung (pairs of students) a name of vocabulary that you are teaching; the teacher then calls a vocab word and the corresponding pair has to get up and run up the ladder, around the outside and back up to their positions; the first to sit down gets a point for their team.
I modified this game for sentences and also made it harder for the students. It uses the same set up and you still have to give each rung a vocab word but the word can be connected to sentences.
For example teaching 'Are you going to?' with a small class: Name 4 rungs tonight, tomorrow, weekend, next week; Teacher speaks 1 sentence 'I am going to go swimming tomorrow'; The corresponding pair then get up, run up the ladder to a table, where they have to find the picture of a person swimming (there are 1 for each team); once found they run back down the ladder to the teacher and hand them the picture; they then have to produce the sentence 'Are you going to go swimming tomorrow?'; the first to complete the sentence correctly wins the point.
You can change the rungs names around so that they have to remember and practice different sentences.
