The worksheet titled "Vocabulary Crossword Puzzles: A Spatial Awareness and Critical Thinking Activity" is designed to help students practice critical thinking and spatial awareness skills while also supporting spelling and vocabulary development. Each crossword-style puzzle has a list of words at the top of the page. Each word must begin in a specifically numbered box in the puzzle below. In order to fit all the words in the puzzle, students must determine whether each word should be written up, down, from left to right, from right to left, or in any diagonal direction. Students must write each word, which exposes them to new vocabulary words, and it gives them practice spelling each word. By figuring out which direction to write each word, students also get practice thinking critically about solving problems, which is an important skill in math and reading.

Helping students develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills can help them approach a wide variety of problems in math and reading, especially when they overlap with other skills and topics that are currently being studied in class. For example, by combining vocabulary, spelling, and math concepts together, students are encouraged to think more deeply about the topics being studied. Students can count the number of letters in a word and compare them to the number of syllables in other words with the same number of letters. They can be asked to find patterns in groups of words, or work on vocabulary-based puzzles like crosswords, word finds, and cryptograms. These types of activities help students see that all subjects are interrelated, encouraging them to think outside the box when solving problems.