I first learned about the Tarsia puzzle making software from Clare Seccombe years ago on her Changing Phase blog, and I recently blogged about in my Old and New Things I Tried in 2023. Tarsia lets you make puzzles for students to put together. They can be tricky, so I have students do them in groups. On each edge of each square or triangle piece (except the outside pieces), there is a piece of information in French. On the edge that touches it is a corresponding piece of information. Some examples are questions and answers, numbers in word and number form, and dates and times in word and number form. It’s a great way to review vocabulary, and it’s lo-tech and hands-on.
It used to be you had to download a software to make the puzzles (or you could try to make them yourself, but it’s very time consuming), but now there is a great website called Tarsia Maker that lets you pick the size and shape of the puzzle and enter in the information. When you’re all done, you can save it as a PDF to print out and cut out.
Here are some recent puzzles I made with Tarsia Maker:
For the last one, I added in the emojis myself in Paint after exporting the PDF. Unfortunately, there is not a way to add emojis or images to your Tarsia in Tarsia Maker. The red outline I added is just to make it easier for students to identify outside edges.
Have you ever used Tarsia puzzles with your students? Have you used other types of puzzles?
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