Crossword brainstorm

Here's another activity from the "warmers and energy raisers" workshop that Spotlight has run in various locations over the last couple of years.

This mini-crossword activity is a useful warm-up to get students "tuned in" to a topic, and is a good gauge of students' knowledge of a subject. It can serve as a filler at the end of a lesson or between activities, or as a review activity in the lesson after you cover a topic. I first tuned in to this activity myself at a workshop given by Donal O'Regan.

Who it's for:
All levels

What it's for:
Introducing a topic, as a quick energy raiser between activities or as a review activity

What you need:
A copy of Spotlight magazine; a board or transparency

What you do:
Find a keyword you want to use by flicking through Spotlight. It can be the name of a place, for example "South Africa". It can also be more abstract or emotive. Before reading Colin Beaven's column this month, thinking about the word "teenager" might help to get your students emotionally involved in the topic.

Write the keyword in capital letters vertically on the board and draw a box around each letter as if the word were part of a crossword.

Ask the students to copy the crossword on to a piece of paper.

Give the students one minute individually to come up with words to do with the subject keyword that will fit into the crossword horizontally. The letters given may form the beginning, end or any part of the middle of the word.

Depending on your teaching principles or particular urges at the time, you can turn the activity into a competition in which the winner is the student who comes up with relevant words in the shortest time. You can also get students to compare notes in pairs or to complete the crossword collaboratively with one student as the scribe at the front of the class.

There will be plenty of standard answers, but also one or two more personal associations that may be worth following up.