Word Search Puzzle

Last week I wasn’t convinced that the students would give adequate attention to their English assignment after being gone on a three day field trip and having assignments in all their other classes.  I was right, no one studied their vocabulary lists for the day. Because I thought that would be the case and because they needed to know these adjectives for the lesson on making comparisons, I made up this word search puzzle exercise. (If you google “free word search puzzle”, you can find the web site I used.  You type in the words you want to use and get a puzzle with the words at the bottom in alphabetical order).

Working in groups of four, they had to find all the words in the puzzle and make up sentences using each word. They could use their dictionaries and a sentence like “He is polite” wasn’t good enough.  They had to tell me what he does to make them think he is polite.  They confused the word “hospitable” for “hospital”, but otherwise did very well. They learned the vocabulary and I learned several things about the students.  I learned one is a talented tennis player and another is a talented guitarist. I already knew who was talkative and which one has a powerful voice.

A couple of weeks ago I met one of the other part time English teachers and we went out to lunch last week.  She came to Japan as a missionary and later became an English teacher in addition to her church responsibilities.  We compared notes on our classes and talked about other things.  I learned she moved here from a city in the midwestern US where I used to live.  Small world!  We are planning to get together again.