puz

I’m a big fan of using games with my English Language Learners (see The Best Ideas For Using Games In The ESL/EFL/ELL Classroom) and, clearly, some games are better than others.

Some of the ones that are near the bottom, in my opinion, are word searches and crossword puzzles EXCEPT for times when, just for a change of pace, having students create their own for classmates to play.

I was inspired this morning of another idea for one of these occasional activities when I saw this tweet:

So, I quickly typed this up to try out the idea:

puzzlepuzzle

Then I copied the screenshot and pasted it onto the Paint program; then saved it as a jpg image.

Next, I went to Jigsaw Planet, uploaded the image, and in seconds it created the online jigsaw puzzle that you see in the image at the top of this post and which you can play here. There are quite a few other sites where you can create your own puzzles – Daily Jigsaw Puzzles and Jigidi are just two more.

It seems to me that students creating these for their classmates could be a nice exercise to do now and then.

What do you think?