Looking for teacher resources to support your Black History Month unit? Here is a fun and interactive Black History Month crosspatch puzzle (with letter hints) to support vocabulary building and engaging students with problem solving strategies. Crosspatch puzzles are similar to crosswords, except that the clues are exclusively word clues and not organized in any order. This brain teaser includes letter hints to support differentiated classrooms. Students fill in the blanks with the correct words.
Here are some ideas of how to solve the puzzle:
1) review the list of words to engage the brain (gets the brain searching for connections between the number of blanks and number of letters in the words clues)
2) organize list of 20 words by number of letters in the word (cataloguing and organizing are problem solving strategies)
3) fill in the blanks with the words that match with the letter clues
4) to track progress, mark off those words (strategy of elimination)
5) identify words with the least number letters, or the most number of letters (another way to organize information)
6) fill in the blanks that match these words
7) scan the grid for intersection points of letters and match them with the words left to fill in
Download the free puzzle to print and/or copy the file to your computer to complete is using Google Apps version.
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