Idea # 2

© Jessica Whittle Photography via Flickr

There are, certainly, tons of ways to review new vocabulary. Unfortunately, there are only so much fill-in-the-blank exercises students can take before they start throwing rotten tomatoes in you. That is why, once in a while, when I need to focus on specific lexical items in a discrete kind of way and check the spelling, I come up with various games. From time to time I write crosswords that are based on the vocabulary of the lessons and give them to my students. You, probably, know how addictive crosswords are - it's very hard to stop once you get into the groove. That is why I don't have to make it a mandatory task, students beg for more crosswords once they get hooked! 

Now, the technicalities. It takes exactly one minute to create a beautiful crossword made of any words you want. I use this Russian website, where I just type all my words in a window and hit "Create" ("Создать") to get five beautiful crossword shapes. I pick one and save the empty structure to my computer as an image. There are many other websites that offer a similar service, such as Cross.Highcat or Crossword Puzzle Maker on The Teacher Corner page. 

Once you have a puzzle structure, you have to write the clues. I write mine in Russian for an extra challenge and a touch of authenticity, but you can write them in students' first language as well.   

Here is an example of one of the crosswords I created:

Happy solving and happy teaching!