Effectively Using a Puzzle Reading Activity

There are so many versatile ways to use a puzzle reading activity in your classroom. Aren’t puzzles amazing? They are so captivating and engaging for all ages! Students are naturally interested in practicing a reading skill because of the mystery of the pieces and how they can fit together.

When I think about puzzles, I marvel at the idea that my toddlers play with small 2-3 piece puzzles and the investment in solving puzzles lasts until the 1000 piece beach puzzle we bought for my grandmother!

Puzzle Reading Activity Dos & Don’ts

When you consider using a puzzle game in your classroom, there are many worries that instantly come to mind. There are also a lot of ways to use puzzles ineffectively. Let’s go through them to make sure that your reading station activities are perfect for your 2nd grade students! (or whatever age you teach- this applies to all classrooms!)

PROBLEM: You don’t know if your students are completing the puzzle correctly.

So you are in the middle of reading centers, you glance over at the group working on puzzles. They are each looking intently, moving pieces around, so they must be finding the correct matches. WRONG! Kids are really good at “looking” busy when they are working independently.

Many may be correctly applying the reading strategies and doing the activity, but also they may not. How could you know?! You could try to keep running over to check every time they announce they made a match, but who needs that added noise or stress during centers.

SOLUTION: Use a puzzle recording sheet.

Underline one word per puzzle piece. Write this word on the recording sheet.

In this video I am completing a puzzle from the main idea puzzle pack!
The differentiated recording sheets are included to match the scaffolded activity options.

This strategy is quick and simple for students to record their activity responses and allows you to check their answers.

PROBLEM: You are giving your students too many pieces and options.

When we prepare an interactive learning activity for our students, we want to make sure there are enough options for them to continue the activity past one minute. However, 30 puzzle pieces that all look the same can be really overwhelming for students to sort through and read.

SOLUTION: Differentiate the puzzle activity to meet your students’ needs.

Teachers need to think about the attention span, reading level, and problem solving ability of their students.

Ways to differentiate a puzzle reading activity:

• vary the number of matches given- some groups could have 5 possible matches or 15 matches
• print the puzzle pieces on different colored paper- this can help students narrow down the options knowing that only blue pieces can match with other blue pieces

My FREE text feature puzzle is perfect for providing limited options to scaffold and focus on the exact skills that you want the students to focus on.

Puzzle Teacher Organization Hack

PROBLEM: Your puzzles fall out of the bag or your students do not put them away correctly and all the sets get jumbled.

We all have that optimistic feeling when we prepare puzzles that they look SO different, and of course we will be able to tell the sets apart. Well.. I don’t know about you but I usually realize a few weeks later that half the pieces are shoved in with something else, and I have no idea which piece is for what set.

SOLUTION: Label the backs of the puzzle pieces by ACTIVITY & SET.

You can store puzzle activities many different ways, but having them labeled will always be helpful! Whenever I am cleaning up and find one lone piece on the floor, I always cringe thinking of how many puzzle sets I have to go through to find where it belongs. Save yourself the time with this teacher organization hack!

I hope that these ideas will help you best use any puzzle reading activity in your classroom!

Read more about how to use my text feature puzzle in this blog post!

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