Are wordsearches still considered a crime?!

[IknowhowDannyGIoverfelt]

Morning MN teachers
So I am returning to the classroom to cover a short absence and have a difficult group. School policy is all students need to get on with an activity as soon as they walk in, does not have to relate to rest of lesson but should settle them down while you take the register.
So, similar to a starter but not teacher-led.
The pupils should have vocabulary booklets and are not expected to write down vocabulary in books.
Will it be frowned upon to have them settled by doing a word search with the keywords on - I am aware many think there is no educational value to word searches but they are looking for words in a different language - the list then comprises itself of the vocab we need that lesson.
Or will I get hung out to dry?

It'd be frowned upon at my school, slt would prefer the words on the board and they have to write sentences.

As would I, but this is a sink set who are already disaffected and won't be taking the language next year. I have no idea what they can actually do and don't think they will cope with being asked to translate or write sentences. I do have a sheet where they just have to fill in their preferences but has nothing to do with the topic.
Would it make a difference that the words being looked for are in the target language or does that make it even more frowned upon?
Thanks for replying btw

Current research shows you do not retain info learned from a straight word search. You’d be better off doing a crossword-like clue with the ‘answer’ in the word search, iyswim. That aids memory.

FFS it's fine if it's not every lesson

I can't as it is all new vocabulary - some which they can guess, some which I would be going through once register done (so was going to ask them to translate the ones they knew and write the meanings down of the new ones, just to save time really as I suspect none will have vocab booklets with them).
I need to think of something else clearly.

As a quick settler for a tricky class, it sounds totally sensible imo.

I did see a colleague with a different subject dole out a wordsearch last week. I am a bit stuck really as the group have been recently doing a project on the computers...but appears to have all been in English rather than in the language they are meant to be doing.

Also...and please do not laugh at my naivety, how much are you all personally spending on purple pens, biros to lend out and gluesticks?
I used to provide this stuff back in the day and on day to day supply but the amount of children without equipment is on a level I haven't seen before. It used to be you logged it and if they had no equipment twice they would have a detention but now with everything being SIMS and behaviour-related that rule seems to have gone by the wayside.

www.theguardian.com/education/2017/oct/18/supply-teachers-spend-1000-on-materials-for-pupils-budget-cuts
Ah, not just me then.
Have a good weekend

Right from when I started my PGCE I was spending about £50-£60 a month because trainees weren't allowed to use school paper and any resources for lessons had to be paid for out of my own pocket. Even stuff we needed to print from university was emailed and we had to print it ourselves, really good value for 9k a year

It's a wonder i ever bothered qualifying really, I'm so glad I'm leaving teaching

There is a set of books called Spelling Made Easy Published by Egon have excellent resources. They include cloze passages, word searches and crosswords all linked to specific words.
The word searches are intended to help pupils scan correctly across the page. They circle the word and then write it out.

I wouldn’t use it for new vocab as I can’t see any value in it so would think of something different for the first week. But the other poster’s suggestion of having clues related to the words or a simple cross word to revise the previous week’s vocab sounds like a good idea after the first week.

Unless you also gave them dictionaries and words/ definitions to match?

I reckon that a revision starter is the way forward - basically a mini test to revise the vocabulary from the previous lesson/week. Picture clues or whatever. New vocab isn’t really something they can do independently without a fuss.

If it's new vocab I would have the words on one side and an image on the other - learners to predict meaning of word via match up task. Depending on the language, there may be enough similarities to the English word that they can do some of them and process of elimination for the rest?

One I used to do (with primary albeit) was if I knew any tables for results or the like were going to need to be drawn later in the session - I'd get them to do that as a settling activity. Used the "dead time" rather than content time to deal with the faffing about/not having rulers/shocking revelation you use a ruler to draw a straight line.

Familiarises them with the words you focus on that lesson - what could be wrong with that?

Or, with a blank grid let them make up the word search with those terms in it.
Then next time they do the (someone else's) wordsearch. Two starters in one