Chemistry Everyday for Everyone
Extended Wordsearches in Chemistry Simon Cotton Uppingham School, Uppingham, Rutland LE15 9QE, UK
Recent developments in science curricula have often tended to adjust the balance between process and content, between knowledge and practical skills. Chemistry is an inherently practical subject, yet it is important that students build up a sound foundation of factual knowledge. So how do we develop this? Children enjoy puzzles, and one of the most familiar of these is the wordsearch (1). By itself, this merely tests word recognition, so over the last 10 years, I have developed what I term extended wordsearches, used by students aged 11–16. To produce these, a wordsearch letter matrix is first constructed using 10 or more words or chemical names to provide a pool of answers. This can be done as a pencil-and-paper exercise and constructed on the spreadsheet grid on a PC; alternatively a computer program may be employed. A number of programs exist. One available in the USA is Multimedia Windows Word Games (2); in the UK, programs such as the widely available Word Games for Windows (3) and Crosswords and More for Windows (4 ) are suitable. Such programs produce puzzles that contain words reading horizontally, vertically, or diagonally, reading forwards and backwards. I first designed these puzzles for mixed-ability classes and therefore the wordsearches were constructed with only left-to-right and top-to-bottom words, as “reversed” words present problems to students with spelling difficulties. The words are then used as a pool of answers for subsequent questions, so that they can often be viewed as a type of multiple-choice question. The problems can be constructed to test either factual recall alone or higher-level skills using structuring to increase the level of difficulty. These puzzles have been used in a wide variety of situations: as end-of-unit checks and tests; as fillers at ends of lessons, when pupils finish practical work before other class members; as homework; and as revision exercises. The approach proved particularly rewarding for pupils of below-average ability, who have found that the graduated element in the exercise is easier to relate to than a direct question-and-answer approach and thus gave many added motivation and interest in the subject. Some Varieties of Exercise One of the simplest types would be an exercise on elements’ names and symbols that revises names of elements and then involves correct matching with the chemical symbols for the elements. In the simplest form, a student could achieve the matching by a process of elimination, so that, if desired, the degree of difficulty could be increased by introducing the names of some 10 further elements whose symbols do not occur in the symbol list. This could be used as an exercise or test with younger students who are meeting symbols for the first time. Another situation in which these exercises have proved useful is as “fillers”, perhaps when some students have com-
pleted a practical exercise. Such a situation could arise following the familiar experiments involving heating chalk and marble chips, followed by testing the products. Wordsearch 1 is appropriate here: Q N
X D W A
C
E
L
B O
C A
A Y
R B O N G P M C
D F
I O X I Q X R M
D E F B
R
H
C H
A
L
K
D
I
U
E
G
B
H
Y D
R
O X
I
D
E
S
E K
J
S
B
K
T
D E
V
T
H N
O C A
L
C
I
U M G O L
O D N
A M H W E M J T X L K S Q V E
G G S
A
Y
H
T W A
E
L
U M
Z
O I N T L
E
P L
N E
I
L
J P R C
Z
R
S M Q
U B
E
B
H V
Find the NINE words or phrases in the wordsearch. List them below. 1....................... 3....................... 5....................... 7....................... 9.......................
2...................... 4...................... 6...................... 8......................
Use them to answer the following questions: 1. Name the four forms of calcium carbonate ............. .............. ............... ............... 2. Name the gas given off when you heat chalk or marble ................... 3. Name the metal present in chalk ..................... 4. Give the chemical name of quicklime ........................ 5. Give the chemical name of slaked lime ...................... 6. Give the chemical name of marble ............................ 7. Name the gas that gives a white precipitate with limewater .................. 8. Give the chemical name of limewater ...................... 9. Name a form of calcium carbonate that is a sedimentary rock ................. 10. Name a form of calcium carbonate that is a metamorphic rock ...............
Sometimes a topic will be revisited during an examination course and two versions of a wordsearch and questions might be employed. An initial encounter with oxygen and the makeup of the atmosphere might later be supplemented with a more detailed examination of uses of the gases and also with specific knowledge of atmospheric pollutants.
JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu • Vol. 75 No. 4 April 1998 • Journal of Chemical Education
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Chemistry Everyday for Everyone
Literature Cited 1. Mullin, J.; Courtney, P. J.Chem.Educ. 1996, 73, A130. 2. From Pro One Software, P.O. Box 16317, Las Crucas, NM 88004, USA. 3. From VCI Distribution Ltd, 36 Caxton Way, Watford, Herts, WD1 8UF, UK. 4. From Expert Software, 8 The Green, Green Street, Willingham, Cambs. CB4 5JA, UK.
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Words in the Wordsearch Calcium Carbonate Eggshell Limestone Oxide
Carbon Dioxide Chalk Hydroxide Marble
Journal of Chemical Education • Vol. 75 No. 4 April 1998 • JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu
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