Russell Stannard recommends more sites for making quizzes, crosswords, worksheets and games.
The Webwatcher article which has generated the most feedback was about online quizzes and sites which enable teachers to make customised worksheets and games. Many readers have requested more sites like the ‘School discovery’ site (http://school.discovery.com) where teachers can quickly create materials to use in the classroom, so I am going to suggest a few more sites like this, and a few different ways to use them. The first section covers free sites, but if you are looking for something a bit more sophisticated, then look at the pay site I recommend in the second section: it is very good and well worth the money.
1. Free sites
Armored penguin
www.armoredpenguin.com/crossword/
There are a lot of sites that make crosswords. This one is particularly good because you can print out the completed grid as well as the empty grid and clues. It also has different formatting and the crosswords that are produced look a little better than some of the others. They are also slightly easier to create as boxes are provided for the definitions and the words.
One thing that I like to do with crosswords is to print out two copies of the same completed crossword and label them A and B. I then white-out half the words from crossword A and the other half from crossword B and make one copy of each for each pair of students in the class so that student A has all the words that are missing on student B’s crossword and vice versa. Students take turns to ask for missing words. The other student has to explain the word, without actually saying it. For example:
This is a great way to get students to work in pairs and build up their skills in paraphrasing and using definitions.
Puzzle-maker
This is another free crossword puzzle maker. It also offers a couple of downloadable versions of more sophisticated puzzle makers (one for crosswords and the other for wordsearches), which you can test out for free.
Easy test maker
This site asks you to sign up, but this only takes about five seconds and you then have free access to a pretty useful set of tools which you can use for making worksheets. It has certain advantages over other sites. You can format the font sizes, font types and even choose to have some of the text in italics. The multiple-choice activity maker is more sophisticated than the one on the ‘School discovery’ site as it allows for more choices. Like several other sites, this one allows you to keep all the quizzes on their server: that way you can build up a collection of on-line exercises over time and give the URLs to your students so they can try to do them at home.
2. A pay site
Quia
This site does take a bit of working out, and you do have to sign up, and, eventually, pay, but it is certainly the most complete quiz website I have come across. It offers a much greater variety of activities than many others, including ‘Battleships’, ‘Hangman’, ‘Pop-ups’ and ‘Rags to riches’, as well as all the usual ones. The cloze exercises are excellent, as you can write a paragraph and choose the words you want to be taken out (other systems tend to take the words out randomly and you have no choice). You can also choose multiple answers. For example, if the missing word was text, then you could also allow TEXT or Text to be accepted as correct. More interestingly, you can give feedback as well. I took a piece of text from this article and made it into a cloze exercise: you can see it at www.quia.com/cz/30235.html. Other exercises to look at are ‘Columns’ (for matching), ‘Scavenger hunt’, which allows you to make quizzes where the students have to browse around the internet to find the answers, and ‘Rags to riches’, which is basically like the television ‘Who wants to be a millionaire?’ game. You simply put in the questions and the whole game is made for you in a very professional format. I have created an easy one for you to try at www.quia.com/rr/60487.html. If you don’t win a million, I will be amazed! The good news is that you can use this site for 30 days for free, which is what I did at first. After your trial period, it will cost you 50 US dollars a year. It has a total of 16 different games and the number seems to be growing. It is far more sophisticated than any other site I have so far found. This is a great tool for language teachers, and once you have got the hang of making the exercises, I think you will find it excellent value.
Russell Stannard is a senior lecturer in ICT and course leader for MSc Multimedia at the University of Westminster, UK. He has an extensive publishing background in ELT and is currently working with BBC Worldwide on various CD-ROMs, and with Macmillan Hong Kong on a primary course. He also teaches English and Spanish at Sutton Adult Education College, UK.
This article first appeared in English Teaching Professional, Issue 32, 2004
