Vocabulary practice with a twist
A crossword makes children recall a word from its meaning and spell it exactly, letter by letter, to fit the squares.More puzzles
See the word search maker and, for pre-readers, the picture crossword in picture puzzles.In NZ classrooms
- Year 3Working out what new words mean from the text, from word parts and from other subjects, and splitting longer words into syllables to spell them.
- Year 4Spelling common homophones correctly, such as their, there and they’re.
- Year 5Spelling less common homophones, such as queue and cue, or minor and miner.
Crosswords aren’t in the curriculum, but they suit two things it asks for from Year 3: knowing what a word means and spelling it exactly. Homophones make a good set, because the clue decides the spelling: “the opposite of here” can only be there.
Topic words from science, social sciences or a class trip also work well. The curriculum expects ākonga to use what they know from other subjects to understand new words, and writing the clues themselves is a strong way to check that they do.
Summarised in our own words from the New Zealand Curriculum: English, Years 0–6 (2025), and the Ministry of Education’s year-by-year guide for parents and whānau.
