Create Your Own Connections Games!

published by Mike Neumire on 3/1/2024 

Have you played the New York Times puzzle game, Connections, yet? These games are engaging, addictive puzzles that require you to think deeply, broadly, and unconventionally about 16 words until you've successfully sorted them into 4 groups- each tied together by some underlying connection. Now you can make your own for your classroom!

Inspired by the popular New York Times puzzle, this Connections template is a powerful vehicles for both teachers and students to explore interdisciplinary connections, reinforce learning, and cultivate a deeper understanding of complex concepts. Students can benefit greatly from both playing and creating these kinds of games, especially when they get to be played by an authentic audience. Integrating key concepts from various subject areas into the game challenges students to apply their knowledge across disciplines, leading to deeper understanding and improved retention.

Designing Connections Games encourages students to unleash their creativity and explore unconventional connections between ideas. Teachers can provide opportunities for students to brainstorm unique clues, draw analogies, and devise innovative solutions, nurturing their creative thinking skills. Additionally, the lateral thinking required to solve these puzzles expands students' cognitive horizons, enabling them to approach problems from multiple perspectives.

Making connections requires students to see the underlying relationships and patterns between different pieces of information. By linking new concepts to prior knowledge or experiences, learners can construct a more comprehensive understanding of the subject matter. This deeper understanding goes beyond surface-level memorization, helping students encode learning by tying it to other ideas, experiences, etc.

Check out the video below to see how to make your own in minutes! You can click here to get started on your own games.  Credit and thanks go to Swellgarfo for building this website. The technology is so easy to use that you and your students can focus your brain power exclusively on the challenge of making good categories! 

 I'd love to showcase the games that you and your students make- please email me links!