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Clicking on the "Gap-Fill Exercises" button on the Mix and Gap editor screen takes you to a page where you can create several gap-fill exercises.

Gap Fill

This is the simplest of the gap-fill formats to create. Creating a gap-fill is simply a matter of clicking on the words which you'd like to make into gaps. You can add up to 3 adjacent words together into one gap. You can also refine a gap so that only part of a word is gapped.

By default the gapped words will appear beneath the exercise (for the on-screen and the worksheet versions). To remove the list of gapped words from the exercise, simply un-check the check box. If you do this, no list of words will appear beneath the exercise, so students will have to type the words in correctly rather than dragging and dropping. You may decide to do this if your exercise has a sound file attached, for example, in order to make the exercise more challenging.

Multi Gaps

This is a multi-choice gap-fill. Select a gap from the text and add up to 3 wormg answers. You can include more than one correct answer per gap. There is a maximum of 60 gaps.

Write Gaps

Written answer gap-fill, with no clues or prompts provided and no word list to choose from. You can specify up to 4 possible correct answers for each gap. There is a maximum of 60 gaps.

Prompt Gaps

A written answer gap-fill with no word list to choose from, but with prompts provided for each gap. This type of gap-fill is ideal for verb conjugation, for example. You can specify up to 4 possible correct answers for each gap. There is a maximum of 60 gaps.

Long Gaps

A gap-fill based on gaps which can be up to 200 characters in length, so you can have whole clauses or sentences as gaps. The gapped information is listed below the text. There is a maximum of 26 gaps

3. (Optional) Create a Find it! exercise

Clicking on the "Edit / Create Find it! Exercise" button on the Mix and Gap editor screen takes you to a page where you can create a Find it! exercise, where students have to look for specific words in the text in response to the prompts that you type in.

Select a target word or phrase from the text and then type in the prompt for this word or phrase. You can type prompts in English, for example, to find TL words or phrases in the text.

You can use Find it! as a way of helping students to understand a more difficult text, or as a way of introducing or revising vocabulary in context.

If you combine elements of the known and the unknown with each text, this helps students to deduce the meaning by looking for the elements that they already know. 
e.g. If the students have already been taught likes and dislikes, you could use a text where likes and dislikes are combined with a new lexical group. So if the student knows that "I like" = "J'aime" and you ask them to look for "I like chemistry", they can look in the text for "J'aime" and will deduce that whatever comes after it is the French for chemistry. Cognates and other contextual clues can also guide the students to the correct answer.

Find it! is a really effective way of introducing (and revising) vocabulary in context, particularly in those situations where a lot of the information has previously been taught. Think, for example, of a GCSE French class which, in theory, has already 'learnt' school subjects and opinions etc in year 7. You don't really want to present the vocabulary items in isolation, as you may have done the first time. Using an exercise such as Find it! is a useful way of revising the topic and checking understanding.

Find it! can be effective with all levels. You can use it to focus on key words in a song or poem at primary level, or for new vocab items and structures in an A level text. It's a matter of matching the exercise to the level of your class and your lesson objectives.

If you want to carry out lots more vocabulary practice based on the lexical items and prompts you have used for your Find it! exercises, see the next step, which essentially doubles your output in terms of resources with just a couple of clicks.

4. (Optional) Generate a TextMatch file based on your prompts and answers for Find it!

Click on the Tools tab on the Find it! input screen, then click on "Make TextMatch exercise based on questions and answers below." This automatically converts your questions and answers into a TextMatch file, with access to 22 interactive games and exercises. You can open this file using the Text Match editor if you want to do any fine-tuning or add / remove items.

5. (Optional) Create a multiple choice reading comprehension

Add multiple choice questions with up to 4 possible answers. You may specify more than one correct answer for each question.

6. Check out the games, exercises and worksheets that you have created...

Depending on how many of the above steps you've followed, you've probably spent between 5 and 30 minutes creating resources, depending on whether you had to type in your text or you just pasted it from elsewhere, and depending on how familiar you are with the whole process.

As a result of your efforts you should have created the following interactive exercises and games, for use with PCs or with an interactive whiteboard. It's a long list (over 40 different interactive games and exercises!!). Scroll down to see the worksheets that you can print too.

Here are links to the Mix&gap file and the TextMatch file featured above: Mix and Gap | Text Match

Based on the original text:

Tile 3x3	Tile 4x4	Tile 5x5
Anagrams	Click & Fill	Find it!
Gap-Fill	1 in 3	Mix Single
Next Letter 1	Next Letter 2	Next Word
Snake (in Mix & Gap)	Space	Invaders 2 (in Mix & Gap)
Text Mix	Tower Block (in Mix & Gap)	Word Guess
Multi Gaps	Write Gaps	Prompt Gaps
Long Gaps	Comprehension