Saipan Flat Stanley Crossword

Creating an Excel crossword puzzle is easier than you think! With the help of an Excel tutorial www.microsoft.com/education/Crossword.mspx I created a crossword puzzle for my social studies class. We are working on the Flat Stanley project www.flatstanleyproject.net/ to send letters to some of my family members in Arkansas. We chose Arkansas because we are currently studying the Southern states and this will hopefully make the United States more meaningful for the students in the classroom.

A great suggestion made by our educational technology teacher, was to have students create the crossword puzzle and then take it home for their parents to complete. What a great idea for so many reasons. This creates motivation for the students to create and learn at the same time. They won't even realize that they are learning their vocabulary for the Quiz on Friday! Another reason that I like this is that the parents are kept up to date on what content is being covered during the year. This is a creative way to help parents know what to ask their children about or to provide more information for them. By putting the student in charge of creating the crossword puzzle it also tells the parent what the child is interested in. Just as teachers are having to find creative ways to present information to students we also need to find creative ways to keep parents informed about all aspects of their child's education.

Students these days are great at multitasking. They can learn new information and programs at the same time. By letting students explore Excel with a purpose the information will become concrete. This should not be a one time only creation though. Students should have the opportunity to use Excel throughout the year to build their skills and ideas on how to use the program and what the different uses could be.

If I did this again I would try to make my crossword look a little nicer but that has nothing to do with learning to use Excel to make a crossword. If I were to use this in the classroom I would suggest to the students to put in a few personal clues for the parents to fill in. This is such a great activity for parents to keep in touch with their kids. I know that lots of parents on Saipan could not fill in a crossword. With this in mind I would tell students that they should sit down with the parent to fill it in.