Sentence Anagrams for Syntax Practice
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Sentence anagrams are a must in your structured literacy classroom routine! Learn what sentence anagrams are, why they’re effective, and get a FREE printable to use with your students.

What Are Sentence Anagrams?
A sentence anagram is a fun word-play activity that targets many important literacy skills like syntax, phonics, fluency, and comprehension.
Students are tasked with reading a series of words in no particular order, then rearranging them to form a complete, coherent sentence.
You can think of it as a sentence-building activity, it’s also referred to as a sentence scramble.
Examples:
- jumps, the, over, a, log, dog ➡ The dog jumps over the log.
- the, old, man, how, is, elderly ➡ How old is the elderly man?
- face, present, when, saw, he, up, the, his, lit ➡ His face lit up when he saw the present OR When he saw the present, his face lit up.
👉 Sentence anagrams work best as a hands-on activity, with each word written on its own small piece of paper.
This lets kids physically move the words, experimenting with different sentence structures as they arrange the words in the correct order.
Why Use Sentence Anagrams?
Sentence anagrams are great for syntax practice because they help kids understand how sentences work. They require students to analyze the relationships between words, understand sentence structure, and consider grammar and punctuation.
All of these skills are essential components of a structured literacy framework.
When students look at individual words in a random order, they are tasked to see how the parts fit together to form a complete sentence.
This allows them to visualize all the parts of a sentence working together and creating a complete thought or idea. And that improves both their reading comprehension and writing skills.
Sentence anagrams can be used at centers, in small groups, or for independent practice. They are the perfect resource for teachers looking to support reading comprehension in an engaging, multi-sensory way.
FREE Sentence Anagram Worksheet (R-Controlled)
We’re giving you a free printable decodable sentence anagram resource to use with your students. This worksheet is focused on r-controlled words.
This worksheet is designed to focus on syntax but also targets phonics, fluency, comprehension, and visualization.

Using the Worksheet
- Kids cut out the words at the bottom. They unscramble the words, paying attention to punctuation, capitalization, and phrasing.
- Once kids have created a real sentence, they glue the words into the boxes at the top.
- They rewrite the sentence on the writing lines.
- Kids check their writing – checking off a box as they check for capitalization, punctuation, spacing, spelling, and understanding (CUPS).
- Kids re-read the sentence 3 times to practice reading fluency. They then color in a star for each reading.
- For comprehension, kids look at four pictures and circle and color in the picture that matches the sentence.
- Finally, they draw their own illustration, adding details based on the words in the sentence.
More SOR-aligned Resources

🌟 50 Decodable Sentence Anagram Worksheets for focused phonics concepts: CVC, blends, digraphs, Magic E, and Bossy R.
🌟 Decodable Sentences Bundle which includes no-prep worksheets, sentence strips, and Google Slides.™
🌟Phonics Bingo Games for reading and spelling practice.
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