Various word puzzles can be made use of as pedagogical tools to make children acquire the suject matter-oriented vocabulary with mental effort and to satisfy the urge accept and meet the challenge, says the Jaipur based educator and action researcher Dr Lalit Kishore.
An action research was on acquisition of vocabulary with conscious mental effort through three types of word puzzles at grade five as a part of classroom instruction at the centre for Unfolding Learning Potentials, Jaipur.
Many educators hold that word puzzles can be effective cognitive tools since they provide challenge, encourage conscious thinking, mental effort and correct spelling. Word puzzles as learning and thinking tool can in fact be explored further since the practice of such in a classroom can yield some encouraging and interesting results.
In some courses, creating word puzzles can totally work to increase the learning curve. An intervention cum action research was undertaken for acquiring new vocabulary with intent and mental effort on environment and health topics through the teacher constructed three types of word puzzles.
The ten word puzzles created were the word-search, words-fare and word criss-cross types. These puzzles were used by the practitioner during a half an hour daily zero-session for a fortnight. The puzzles were used at grade level five and also, the process of creating puzzles was demystified to enable children to create and share their own puzzles on different lessons the environmental studies textbook.
The intervention was favoured by the students (N=20, bridge school rural girls, age: 9-14) at 0.05 levels of significance. The typical comments of students involved the words like ‘think’; ‘play with words’; challenge’ and ‘fun’.
Note: The abstract was submitted for the 14th International Conference on Thinking
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, from 22 to 26 June 2009.
Keywords: Conscious mental effort, word puzzles, cognitive tool.
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