Word Search

Create a free, printable word search puzzle

Here on teachcoderepeat.com, you can create a printable word search puzzle / worksheet that can be printed or saved for free!

To customise your PDF worksheet, you can enter the title of your puzzle, a description and/or some instructions, choose the size of the puzzle grid, choose how the words are placed that will determine how difficult the word search is to solve.

If you require any inspiration, we have collected a number of word search puzzles that have been previously created.






 

Teaching Information

Screenshot showing an examples of a produced word search

When teaching two dimensional (2D) arrays to KS4 pupils (a topic that most sruggle with) familiar games like Noughts and Crosses, Connect4 and Word Searches offer a great way for them to learn and use these more complex data structures when they can use their prior knowledge to their advantage. I have found a useful teaching opportintuy is getting them to think how a computer might go about finding the words in a word search grid. Getting pupils write down an algorithm (a sequence of steps required to complete a task) on their mini whiteboards to search for words that is guaranteed to work.

Assuming words are only laid out horizontally, start with the first letter of a word in the top left hand corner of the grid, iterate through all cells in the grid until you find the first letter of the word. When you find it, check the cell to the right for the second letter. If its not there, move on. If it is there, look for the third letter, and so on. Some pupils will naturally write down a for loop as part of the algorithm, and others will need help getting their thoughts into Pseudocode.