Puzzles and Worksheets

A great way to help students remember the key objectives in your lessons is to provide activities which are both fun and educational. It's easy to apply the techniques you have already mastered in desktop publishing to produce a variety of printed puzzles and worksheets. These can be used as part of your regular instruction, or can be placed within centers to target specific skills. In addition, these activities are great for extending the learning, or to differentiate instruction for the various levels of students you have in your classes. Puzzles Puzzles appeal to children and can help them develop new concepts and reinforce skills in curriculum areas such as language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies. The Internet provides many online tools for generating the puzzle itself. You can then download or save the puzzle to your computer so that it may be enhanced with clipart and/or WordArt. The ease with which these puzzle generating web sites produce puzzles allows you to quickly and easily create multiple versions of a puzzle to use in your classroom. Some of the most common puzzles used in teaching include: crossword word search word scramble cryptogram hidden message number square soduko Here are some ways to put use online puzzles in the classroom: After students work with a particular kind of puzzle such as a crossword puzzle, have them to work in groups to create their own puzzles. Be sure to allow plenty of time for this kind of activity: Create puzzles that are cross-curricular or interdisciplinary in nature. Use varied levels of difficulty in creating puzzles to differentiate for your students. Have puzzles available as extensions to class activities. Place puzzles in learning centers. Provide links to online puzzle sites in your favorites or bookmarks Create a Filamentality site for nothing but online puzzles. Worksheets Teachers have used worksheets to reinforce learning for decades! At one time, all worksheets were produced by hand, and were replicated through the use of either a mimeograph or a ditto machine. You may remember having used these materials which were printed in purple ink and frequently smelled of the chemicals used to reproduce them. In today's world, teachers may have access to worksheets which accompany their textbooks, they may purchase books of "blackline" m,asters for reproduction , they can find numerous worksheets available for free online, or they may produce their own. Although some teachers do write their worksheets by hand, using technology can make them much more professional in appearance. Today, teachers reproduce their worksheets using a standard copier, or by printing multiple copies directly to the printer. A great way to save paper is to insert copies of worksheets into sheet protectors and allow students to use special markers, or write their responses on notebook paper. These worksheets may be reused year after year. Worksheets are not classified by format. They are simply organized by subject and/or learning objective. art health language arts math music physical education science social studies foreign language and others Check out some of these subject specific puzzles and worksheets History Worksheets Math Goodies- Puzzle Library Language Arts Worksheets Science Spot-Puzzle Corner These sites offer a variety of puzzles and worksheets in many subject areas ABCTeach Qualint Armored Penguin Schoolhouse Technologies EdHelper Teach-nology - Crossword Kid Crosswords and Other Puzzles Teach-nology - Word Scramble Kids Domain Web Quizzes and Activities Learning Page Worksheet Generator Puzzlemaker Worksheets for Teachers