Making+crosswords+with+Puzzlemaker

To create your own crosswords, go to [|**www.puzzlemaker.com**]. It's also good to create wordsearches.

Click on "Try other puzzles"then on "criss cross puzzles Step 1: enter your title Step 2: I usually ask for only 30 (but you can edit that at the end) Step 3: if you have more than 15 words you need to reduce the size of the square if you want an A4 paper, I suggest 20 or 25 instead of 30 as suggested. Step 4: type the word you want to appear in your cross word (the ones the students need to find), and type a space after the word, you can now type the equivalent in another language or a synonym in English (at this stage you can not write definitions for there's not enough space). What I have been doing is type the word the SS need to find, a space and the same word again, and I edit it after having saved it into a Word document.

Once you're done, click on Create my puzzle, and here you go, pure magic here's your own personal cross word. Make sure that in the left hand corner is stated the exact number of words, it usually says: 15 words out of 15 (if not they're is a problem: maybe there's not enough space so you need to reduce the size of the squares for example or remove one or two words).

To save it as a file/to edit it and maybe to make photocopies: Right click on the cross word itself and "save the image" copy and paste it onto a new Word document. (make sure you leave some lines before pasting it otherwise you won't have space for your title). Go back to puzzle maker and copy and paste the written part (words with across and down) under your grid. You can now edit it by adding definitions or anything else.

I usually make a puzzle every three weeks to check if they remember new vocabulary. They usually enjoy doing it. I tell them they shouldn't look in their notebooks but after 10 minutes if they're stuck they can move around the room to find somebody who's got a word they don't have.

It can also be done in pairs as you can have two versions, one with half the words and the other with the other half, students have to give a definition in English of the word they can see to their partner.