The objective of this game is to change active sentences to passive ones. This activity is designed for students in upper elementary or middle school but works well for high school grammar classes as well. Begin by dividing the class into teams. Groups of three or four work together to change an active voice sentence to passive. Give each group of students a sentence strip made of colored cardstock on which you've written a sentence in active voice. The students must work together to change it to passive. For example, they must change the sentence "Scientists observed the tigers in their natural habitat." One group member races to the board and rewrites the sentence in passive voice. Play the game in rounds, and keep score for each group. Correct sentences are worth five points, while incorrect ones get zero. The group to reach the designated total points first wins the game.
Choose teams of three to play this game. Give one person all the cards with passive verbs such as "was bitten," give the second person body-parts flashcards, and give the third person flashcards with pictures of animals, people and objects. Each member selects a card from his own stack, but doesn't show it to the other members. Then they lay their selected cards on the table, and the members try to make a sentence from them. An example of a correct passive sentence is "He was bitten on the leg by a tiger." If the sentence they make is correct, the team gets a point. If the sentence is nonsense, the group gets no points. Total all points at the end, and the group with the most points wins.
Have students draw a pictorial representation of a sentence they create. This works well as an individual or group activity. They must illustrate the sentence in both passive and active voice and then present the drawings to the class. For example, "Mary hit the ball over the fence" and "The ball was hit over the fence by Mary." The class decides which sentence is better to include in a writing activity and why.
Call three students to the front of the classroom. Present each one with a slip of paper. For example, one student gets a slip that says "The new outfielder." The next student gets one with the word "hit." Another student's paper says "the ball." They must interact with each other to make a sentence by placing themselves in correct order. This obviously is an active sentence with the subject on the right. Call three more students to the front and follow the same procedure, but this time use "The ball" for one, "was hit" for another and "by the new outfielder." Ask the class what the difference is in the positions of the subject, verb and direct object in active and passive sentences. Allow other groups of students to make up their own sentences and to line themselves up accordingly.