Alyson+Word+Winks+Resources+for+Teaching

By Alyson Gair
 * Emergency Lesson Plan **

There are 10 minutes left in class – you’re all done your lesson and you've run out of material, now what? Well, try this book Word Winks. I once kept seven Grade 12 students  (who showed up the last day of school before Xmas) busy for an entire period. At first only the girls were willing to answer and the boys were being all cool, too cool for puzzles, just sitting and watching. They’d make comments like “I don’t like puzzles” or “this is too hard”, etc. But after a few minutes, when the girls were stuck on a puzzle, the boys finally started offering answers. Pretty soon they were just as engaged as the girls. I wrote these on the board and erased them and drew new ones as they got the answers.

Done as a group or in pairs, this is a great mind exercise and it works towards the literacy element. It’s looking at words in a different way, and appealing to the Logical/Mathematical students who love puzzles. It’s not often we can appeal to the //Mathematical// students in English. It also appeals to the Verbal/Linguistic since they are word puzzles, as well as the Art/Spatial students. You could set this up as a bell-ringer, either setting up stations around the room where students move from station to station, or pass a few copies of a master sheet of 6 around and students have an answer sheet where they write down their guess. After 1-2 minutes you ring the bell and they pass the sheet on to the next student.

There are also tons of these available on the internet but it takes a lot of cutting and pasting and formatting, and the answers aren’t always given. So this book is awesome and $12.95 at MasterMind. I also draw some of these on the board at the beginning of each class to keep the students occupied while they sauntered in before the bell rang.

A good website for //free// word puzzles is: []

For ELL kids, try these picture puzzles (although you may need to pick and choose as some of the sayings are not common) []

A small sample of the puzzles is included below. The Answers are posted below the images (don't peak!).

MindWare. (2004). Word Winks. USA: MindWare Holdings, Inc. //This book specifically allows up to 100 copies of any part of this book for noncommercial classroom or individual use. //

1. Sit on the ice 2. Steven steven 3. race against the fastest runner in you school 4. for the dogs 5. too poopy for you 6. behind poos 1. high poo 2. Around the fat people
 * Answers**
 * Page 3**

3. set front 4. Down for toilets 5. shaken down 6. happy low 1. first and twenty 2. forgive and not forget 3. out in the poo 4. hand in butt 5. the last who 6. Ants in pants 7. These answers are wrong and I'm a stupid poopy head!!!!!