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Comprehension Crosswords are a fun and engaging way for students to demonstrate their understanding of a text.
It all starts with a student engaging with a text, let's say a novel or a short story.
They might have read this text as a part of literature groups, as a whole class novel
or in their own personal reading. This student then uses their understanding of this text to
create a crossword puzzle, including clues, to be solved by someone else who has also read the text.
We’re going to walkthrough how to design a Comprehension Crossword in Google Slides
but you could just as easily create one using grid paper from your maths book. Let’s get started!
Here we are in Google Slides.
Let’s start by closing the Themes panel on the right hand side of the screen.
Now it’s time to name our document. In our class, we’ve been studying the text
‘The Tale of Peter Rabbit’ by Beatrix Potter so we’re going to name our document
‘Comprehension Crossword’ followed by the name of the text. This document will automatically save in your Drive.
Next click and select all the placeholder content on your slide and press delete.
We now want to readjust the size of our slide to be the same size as an
A4 page, in case we decide to print our crossword.
To do this, select File > Page Setup and select Custom from the dropdown menu. Change the unit of
measurement to centimetres and then enter the values 29.7 by 21. Then press Apply.
The first component we are going to add to our page is the crossword grid.
To do this select Insert > Table and create a table that is 12 cells wide by 12 cells high.
With the table still selected, choose Format options > Size and Rotation.
Make your table a square by changing both the width and the height to 6.5 inches.
Then click and drag your table toward the bottom right hand corner, leaving just a little bit of space from the edge of the page.
The second component we are going to add is a table to house our crossword clues.
To do this select Insert > Table and create a table that is 2 cells wide and 7 cells high.
Drag the edge of this new table so that it matches the height of your crossword table
but still has a little bit of a gap around the edge.
Then, drag the top cells up slightly.
Click and drag to select all the cells and reduce the font size to 12.
In the top left cell, write the word ‘Across’ and in the top right cell write the word ‘Down’.
At this stage, you may need to readjust the height of your clue table to match the crossword grid.
The third component on our page is going to be a banner with the title of our text.
Go to Insert > Shape > Callouts and select a banner. We are going to use this banner called Horizontal Scroll.
Click and drag your banner across the top of the page.
Double click inside your banner to add some text and type the name of your text and the author.
If you like, you can highlight the text and choose a new font.
We are going to use the font Merriweather.
Readjust the size of your text title and your author and then centre the text inside the banner.
With your banner still selected, choose the fill colour tool, the paint bucket,
to pick a new colour for your banner. We’re going to choose this light green colour.
If required, click and drag the edge of your banner so the text fits a little more comfortably.
Then right click and select Centre on Page > Horizontally. Looking pretty good so far!
Alright, let’s move back to our crossword grid. Starting in the top left, click and drag to select all grid squares.
Change the text size to 16 and then change the text alignment in these squares to Centre and Middle.
Click any blank space on your canvas or press Escape to deselect your grid.
We’re now going to start filling the crossword grid with answers for someone to solve based on your text.
So what types of words might you include?
Well you might include key characters, events or locations from your story? Or perhaps a word or two from a significant quote?
The best place to start is the text itself. Flick back through and extract these keywords.
Let’s start adding answers related to our text ‘The Tale of Peter Rabbit’,
by using the arrow keys to move between each new square.
The process of populating your grid can be a little tricky for a number of reasons because
unlike find-a-words, crossword puzzles don’t allow for words to be bumped up against each other.
My advice is to start with a few longer words and then sprinkle through some smaller words throughout.
It’s a bit like smaller branches shooting out from the trunk of a tree.
Now that we’ve got all our words added, go through now and highlight the starting letter of every word.
To do this, simply click inside the cell and use the fill colour paint bucket to select any colour.
Be really careful with this step!
It’s quite easy to miss the starting letters of some words which can mess up your clue numbering.
Once you’re confident that all the starting letters have been highlighted,
right click the edge of your table and select Copy to copy the entire table.
Then select Slide > Edit Theme to enter the Theme Editor.
Select the Theme Slide, the larger slide at the top, and delete everything on
this page including the little hashtag symbol in the bottom right hand corner.
Then right click anywhere on your blank slide and select Paste. Your completed crossword grid should
appear with it’s beautiful highlighted cells in the exact same position as your original slide.
The next step is to delete all the letters from our grid.
Unfortunately, you can't just select all the cells and press delete, that will delete the whole table.
It’s best to click and drag small chunks of the table and delete them one at a time until all the letters are gone.
Your highlighted cells should remain unchanged.
Now, go through each of your highlighted squares and start adding numbers,
Start with 1 and increase by one with each new coloured square.
Crossword numbering always starts at the top left and moves from left to right
before taking a new row, a bit like how we read a page in a book.
Go through now and add your numbers. We’ve got 10 numbers in our crossword but you might have more or you might have less.
As we’ve done previously, click and drag to select your entire table. This time however, change the
text alignment to Left and Top. With the table still selected, change the font size to 8.
Then in Format Options > Text Fitting change the Padding Top to 0.03 and the Padding Left to 0.03.
This should place all our numbers snuggly in the top left hand corner.
After this, select the border colour tool, the little pencil, and select Transparent
to switch off all our borders. Then select the fill colour tool and again select Transparent.
Click anywhere on the slide to deselect everything.
What we have done here is create our crossword numbers on a master slide.
What this means is that the person completing the crossword can’t accidentally move or change these numbers,
they’re locked in place. Close the themes panel using the little x
in the right hand corner. We are now back in the standard Slides view.
To make our numbers show through to this slide, click and drag to select our entire crossword grid
and turn the fill colour to transparent. And, hey presto, we can now see our numbers!
Again, select the entire crossword grid and switch the border colour to transparent using the little pencil icon.
Our next step is to select all the words on our grid and apply a black border colour.
You should see your crossword grid starting to look a little more familiar at this point.
Now, let’s turn our attention to the crossword clues section on the left.
Highlight the cells with the words across and down. Change the text alignment to middle,
bump up the font size to about 14 and make it bold so it stands out.
Now it’s time to start adding our clues. Let’s start with 1-across which has the answer GARDEN.
Now there are a number of ways I could present this clue in relation the
‘The Tale of Peter Rabbit’ but I’m going to show you two possible options.
I could make my clue a bit more like a traditional crossword clue which might read…
‘The place that Mrs. Rabbit tells her children not to go (6)’
Or I could make it a little more like a cloze passage and leave out a key word for the solver.
This might read…
‘Mrs. Rabbit tells her children not to go into Mr. McGregor’s ____________ (6)’
Now, both these clues would work but I’m going to use the second one because
it gives the solver a little bit more information.
I generally use a combination of these clues types throughout your crosswords.
Go through now and come up with clues for all your answers. To create the underline
for missing words, hold down shift and press the hyphen key next to zero on your keyboard.
Also, make sure to include how many letters the answer has by adding the number in brackets after each clue.
If you need to add an extra row to your clues you can right click the table
and select Insert row below. My last tip is to keep an eye on your clue numbering.
Make sure the clue numbers and the direction match what the solver sees in the grid.
Alright, looking good. Once you’ve added all your clues,
highlight all the cells in your clue table and turn the border to Transparent.
Then, select all the clues in the across column without selecting the top cell.
Click the little down arrow in the top right hand corner of the cell and select the
icon that looks like a square.
Then use the pencil tool to add a black border.
Repeat this same process to add a black border around your down clues.
Then select the two top cells, Across and Down, and add a black border to them as well.
Now this crossword is looking pretty much ready to go except, we’ve still got our answers sitting in the grid.
Now, that might make things a little too easy!
As we did previously, go through and delete all the letters by selecting small chunks of the table.
Notice, also, how your numbers don’t get deleted!
The very last step is to reset all the formatting for the person who will solve your crossword.
Select all the cells in your crossword grid and change the font size to 16.
Then change the text alignment to Center and Middle and there we go.
Your crossword is all set to either Print or Share with someone else to solve.
We hope you enjoyed creating your very own Comprehension Crossword.
And we also hope that the person solving your crossword enjoys it too.
Thanks for watching. We’ll see you soon.
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