Working as a teacher for the past 17 years, I have taught many different subjects, from kindergarten to grade 10. When I started teaching French nearly 15 years ago, I was so grateful to be teaching what I loved most. The problem was that I was never happy. I was always staying up late, sometimes until 4 am, creating my own French worksheets and flashcards because I wanted to customize them exactly the way I wanted them to be. And still, I found myself always reinventing my program and myself. It wasn't until I dived into the AIM method two summers ago that I began to feel a sense of contentment. I started to finally feel successful because my students felt successful in being able to express themselves in French. Mind you, I still spend a lot of time creating my own complementary materials, such as interactive SMART Notebook activities, DIY magnetic words and mini books, to further engage my students. But I thoroughly enjoy it. The one thing I struggle with is leaving plans for an occasional teacher whenever I am away because my program is heavily based on oral communication and gestures. Quite often the OT does not know French well enough or, as is in 100% of the cases, they do not know the AIM gestures or the method in general.

The other day, I had to leave plans and, while I normally leave instructions for students to continue working at their own pace on their activities and ask the teacher for the next activity sheet when done, I wasn't so sure about the whole thing. Most of my students are now at a point where the activities are becoming more difficult and I want to be there in person to support them. So instead, I opted to leave something easier but that also gives them a bit of a break from their regular activities. And besides, who doesn't love a good word search, am I right? 

Below is a copy of the one I created for my grade 2 students who are working on a level 2 unit. I chose to add a layer of difficulty by tasking them with finding the opposite of the words in the word bank. They know these pretty well thanks to "La danse en action" videos I play to give the kids a brain break. I designed this word search in Google Docs by inserting a 12 by 12 grid and adjusting the table properties so that the cell dimensions were square, making sure to centre the vertical and horizontal alignment of the cells. The title was created via a Google Drawing where I used Word Art and the "Luckiest Guy" font. I was so happy with how it turned out, I look forward to using it as a template for different and more complex word searches. If you like it, too, click on the thumbnail below to download a free PDF copy.