Earlier this month I posted an article here about making and using effective word search puzzles, and at the end of that post I promised I would feature a kind of "super word find" resource. Well, here it is!
This is a massive word search puzzle featuring more than 300 key words from the vocabulary corpus prepared for the starters level of the Cambridge Young Learners of English Tests.
There are two downloads you can access here for this puzzle (the first being the word search itself, with the second being a kind of teacher's guide along with a full listing of all words in the puzzle, sorted into general thematic categories):
Download Super_Starters_Wordfind_288673
Download Starters_Wordfind_Teachers_Guide_598795
I also have a similar "super-size" word search resource for the Movers level of the YLE test (next level up from Starters) available on the English Raven website.
These word search puzzles actually took days to plan and make, and I originally put them together for a couple of reasons:
1) I wanted a resource that could be used during those "spare time" sessions in class (like when I was giving 1-1 feedback on written work, or conducting speaking tests 1-1 outside the class and needed something to keep the learners busy in the class, or some students had finished a task early and needed something to occupy them while the rest of the class was catching up), that would nonetheless be very useful to the learners in their English vocabulary development;
2) I wanted an "ongoing" resource that could be tacked in small doses, but could last for a very long time;
3) I wanted to make a word search application that would give the learners peripheral exposure to many words they had already learned or would soon learn, even while they were focussing on finding a specific set of words;
4) I wanted to encourage the search for words in defined lexical sets;
5) I wanted material that would encourage teamwork and collaboration;
6) I wanted a resource that would be reasonably fair and accessible to all learners in a mixed-ability classroom setting.
In the teacher's guide download there you'll also see more advantages of the word search application - and please forgive the rather overt linking to various second language learning principles mentioned there (I was in MATESOL mode when I initially designed the material, and my TGs from that time seemed to feel an ongoing need to link materials to official methodology and research findings!).
Unfortunately, several of the teachers I gave this resource to just saw it as an awesome way to keep students busy for very long periods of time when they hadn't done much lesson planning or couldn't come up with ways to extend and nourish set coursebook tasks. Fortunately though, this kind of word search features words from a well-designed corpus appropriate for kids. Basically, even when teacher's abuse the basic application of it, it can still be very helpful to learners!
One last tip - I used to enlarge this puzzle to fit on B4 or A3 size paper, so that the letter boxes wouldn't require too much squinting from the learners!
:-)
