How to Make a Plant Cell Crossword Puzzle

Plant cell crossword puzzles can be used to make learning the anatomy of plants fun. You can use the puzzles to determine whether or not the individual you are teaching is retaining the information. The puzzles can also be used if you are a teacher wanting to test your students in a classroom setting.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

1. Determine how many questions you would like to have in your crossword puzzle. You will need to have two sets of questions. One set of questions will be for the words that are horizontal (across) on the puzzle, and the second set of questions will be for words that flow vertically (down) on the puzzle. There must be an equal number of horizontal and vertical questions.

2. Create your horizontal questions. If you like, you can use a plant cell anatomy chart or plant cell definitions chart to develop your questions. For example, question "1 Across" can be "What is the jellylike substance outside of the cell nucleus that stores organelles?" and "2 Across" can be "Where is the ribosomal RNA produced?"

3. Draw square boxes that are horizontal on the puzzle after you have created your horizontal questions. Place the question number in the first box of each question. Following the example in the previous step, for question "1 Across" you will draw nine squares, since the answer to the question is "cytoplasm." For question "2 Across" you will draw nine squares since the answer is "nucleolus."

4. Begin creating your vertical questions. When creating the vertical questions, be sure that the answer has at least one common letter with its horizontal counterpart. For example, for question "1 Down" there must be one letter that is also in the word "cytoplasm." You can ask "What kind of disks contain chlorophyll?" The answer would be "Thylakoid." The letter "T" in thylakoid is common with the letter "T" in cytoplasm.

5. Draw square boxes that are vertical on the puzzle. When drawing the vertical boxes, the first box should connect with the horizontal box that contains the common letter. For example, Since the common letter "T" is the fourth letter in the word "Cytoplasm," you should connect the vertical box for "1 Down" to the fourth box of "1 Across."

6. Create yourself an "Answer Key" for your plant crossword puzzle. The answer key will contain all the correct answers and make it easier for you to glance and check which answers are right or wrong.

References

• Plant Cell Anatomy
• More About Plant Cells

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