I’m generally skeptical about the educational value of students completing word searches.  It seems to me that it’s basically “make work.”

However, I’ve sometimes had my students create word searches using the vocabulary we’ve been studying, share them with their classmates, and have a little game to see who could find the most words in a short period of time.  The fact that students were creating the word searches themselves,  that we were spending just a few minutes doing it,  and that we turned it into an energizing little game justified it in my mind.

Now students can also make a word search, and other word games, online.  I’ve placed a link to a company called APTE under a new category titled Student Word Searches.  You can find it on my Examples of Student Work page.  Again, I have mixed emotions about their usefulness, but it could be a fun activity to do now and then.

Students can create word games and email them to their teacher.  You can then post the url on a website. 

You have to register on the site, but it only takes a few seconds to do so.