Wordsearch puzzles are fairly common to many foreign languages classrooms. They offer a good opportunity to focus on the spelling of words. Unless students need to first translate the words from English to the target language, there is not much opportunity to focus on the meaning of the words that students are looking for in the puzzle. One way to refocus the attention on the meaning as well as the spelling is to have students highlight or circle the words in the puzzle with a particular color that identifies the category that it is in. Great practice for circumlocution, too.
For example: animals (orange), class objects (purple), etc. This way, as the students find the words that are listed next to the puzzle they also need to identify the category, and in turn need to makes sure they know the meaning of the word so that they identify it in the puzzle with the correct color.
