Using the puzzles
Activities in English Puzzles for KS3/KS4 can be used for:
A starter is a short activity that is used to get a lesson off to a purposeful start by capturing students’ attention and introducing key concepts and vocabulary. Displaying a relevant puzzle (chosen using the Concepts index) on a projector as students arrive, or having worksheets waiting on each desk, is a good way to accomplish these objectives. Once students have had time to attempt to solve the puzzle, you can discuss the solution and the general concepts that underpin it, and then lead into the main body of the lesson.
A plenary is an activity used at the end of a lesson to reinforce key concepts or vocabulary from the main body of the lesson. Many of the puzzles in this resource are ideal for use as plenaries, since they can be used to demonstrate an interesting or unusual application of what students have just learnt, helping students to link the concepts involved to situations beyond what they have just covered.
If you often use the puzzles in this way, students may even begin to look forward to them. This makes them more likely to stay on-task during the lesson, because they want to make sure they have time for what they see as some welcome light relief.
Many of the puzzles are designed to encourage students to consider different strategies as they work towards a solution. By dividing students into pairs or small groups, you can encourage them to discuss alternatives with each other, giving them the opportunity to state and justify opinions and verbally weigh up different approaches – an ideal way to build speaking, listening and teamwork skills.
Some puzzles, such as Which hand, which coin? and Guess a friend’s age and birthday, have to be delivered in pairs or small groups. A good idea is to give each student in a pair or group a different puzzle in worksheet form, and let them take turns asking and answering the questions.
You can involve the whole class by displaying a puzzle (in PowerPoint format) on a projector or interactive whiteboard and trying to solve it together. This is a particularly good way to use the more open-ended puzzles, as well as challenging tasks where the whole class may need to collaborate to find a solution. Some of the spatial puzzles work well when used with an interactive whiteboard, as students can use the whiteboard’s annotation facility to attempt to draw their solution in front of the class, justifying their reasoning, and their work can be easily cleared for someone else to try if they are unsuccessful or if someone suggests an alternative approach.
Many of the puzzles in this resource work well as a model of a type of puzzle, which students can then follow as they devise questions and challenges of their own. By creating puzzles for themselves, students will deepen their understanding of the grammatical, logical or semantic points that underpin them.
Other puzzles can stimulate a longer piece of writing. Step by step and Seventeen horses are good examples, but the only limit to this is your imagination (and that of your students).
Suggestions for further tasks are given under the Extension heading on each relevant page.
Because the puzzles are slightly different from ‘ordinary’ school work, they can lend themselves well to use in less formal settings such as clubs outside normal school hours. Once students have found a solution, they could be encouraged to try to come up with similar puzzles of their own for others to solve.
Several of the puzzles require students to read the question very carefully in order to solve them correctly. This makes them good to use for exam preparation, as interpreting what is actually being asked is an important exam skill. Suitable puzzles for this include:
You may wish to incorporate some of the puzzles into longer tests or quizzes, for example for an end-of-term quiz or a class, subject or whole school competition. To do this, simply open the relevant PowerPoint or PDF file, copy the text, and paste it into a word processing programme. Pictures and diagrams included in PowerPoint files can also be copied in this way.
Language
The puzzles are based on material originally produced in 1933. Much of the language has been brought up-to-date, but some of the vocabulary and sentence structure may still appear old-fashioned (for example, the imperial measures have been conserved). This can provide good practice for students in coping with unfamiliar vocabulary, but you should be aware that some students may need extra help to understand what is being asked.
Some puzzles, especially in the Trick questions section, rely on clever wording to be effective. Discussing how the wording of a question can influence people in their approaches to solving it is a good way to interest students in experimenting and playing with language.
Cross-curricular links
Many of the puzzles have links with other subjects. Examples include:
The Optical illusions and Visual riddles have obvious links with art and design, particularly if students are challenged to create similar examples of their own.
The clever thief provides an opportunity to talk about the ethics and feelings associated with stealing. The farmer’s legacy can act as a starter for a discussion about wills and fairness.
A nation’s hero and some of the Visual riddles require knowledge of historical people and events. Students could also be asked to create puzzles relating to the topics they are currently studying.
Most puzzles that have a problem-solving or numerical element are underpinned by mathematical concepts. This is most overt in the Numerical and Spatial puzzles.
starters