Overcoming Obstacles
Listening
Focus, confirm, respond. Middle schoolers engage in a series of activities designed to help them improve their listening skills. They listen to and try to solve a riddle and play a version of the telephone game. Participants learn that...
Penguin Books
Educator's Guide: The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code is filled with secrets. Help readers find the clues, solve the riddles and puzzles, and unwrap the mysteries with a six-page guide that includes before, during, and after reading discussion questions and...
Overcoming Obstacles
Listening
The big idea in this resource is that listening and hearing are not the same things. A lesson on active listening has class members generate a list of listening techniques that focus on the speaker, confirm what they say, and respond...
Farmington Public Schools
British Literature Honors: Beowulf
Whether new to teaching Beowulf or an experience pro, you'll find much to like in a richly detailed unit plan that asks readers to consider how the epic represents the difficulty in defining good and evil but also reflects the changing...
Poetry4kids
Writing Riddles
What's got 60 eyes, 150 fingers, and an endless number of ideas? Your language arts class! Challenge young writers to come up with clever riddles with an online poetry lesson.
Curriculum Corner
Riddle Cards
What better way to introduce making inferences than with riddle cards? Young readers practice making inferences through riddle cards and other types of reading, while filling out graphic organizers. The resource even comes with blank...
University of Northern Iowa
Additional Folklife Information
Use a packet packed with ideas for how to celebrate the traditions of your country, state, community, and pupils's families. Suggestions for how to draw on oral and material traditions, customs, beliefs, music, and stories all find a...
Florida Center for Reading Research
Vocabulary: Words in Context, Pun Fun
Scholars explore a variety of texts to locate wordplay. Partners read their selections and discuss meanings.
K12 Reader
Edgar Allan Poe’s Mystery Valentine
Riddle me this! As part of a Valentine's celebration, class members are challenged to find the key to solve the riddle in Edgar Allan Poe's Valentine poem.
Scholastic
Why Did the Shoe Go to the Doctor?
Your learners will use all the hours in a day to complete this riddle! They must figure out how many hours are in one day, three days, six days, and so on by using multiplication. They then use their answers to puzzle out the riddle.
Curated OER
Short Poems Are Scary!
What do all those chairs and pencils do in the classroom once everyone leaves? Allow imaginations to run wild with frighteningly short poems!
Curated OER
I Spy Poetry
Explore the components of rhythm and form through a reading of Jean Marzollo's I Spy books. After discussing Marzollo’s format, the class agrees upon a theme for a class book and topics that fit with that theme. Pupils write a poem,...
Curated OER
Guess Again!
Students define and read riddles, and differentiate between poems and riddles. They complete a class Venn Diagram comparing poems and riddles, and play an attribute guessing game with the teacher. Students then identify the rhyming words...
Curated OER
My Ten-Frame Riddle
Learners will have fun trying to trick their classmates in this interactive ten-frame riddle activity. After choosing a number and filling in the frame, they create three clues to challenge a classmate trying to guess their number. A...
Curated OER
What Am I?: Geometric Shape Riddles
Combine literacy, problem-solving, and geometric shape recognition with this riddle activity. Scholars solve 4 riddes, naming the shape described in each. Descriptions are in first person, and include a real-life look-alike. For example,...
National Endowment for the Humanities
The Beauty of Anglo-Saxon Poetry: A Prelude to Beowulf
Riddle me this! What do kennings, caesura, and alliteration have to do with the Nowell Codex? Introduce class members to Anglo-Saxon poetry and prepare readers for a study of Beowulf with a series of activities that includes asking...
Curated OER
Movie Riddles: An ESL Activity to Get Student Talking About Movies
Enjoy the thrill of the movies with this ESL activity! Not only can learners talk about their favorite films, but in creating riddles about their chosen movies, they can practice the skills of context clues and deductive reasoning. This...
Curated OER
Riddles
Riddles can be a fun way to practice word decoding. Scholars read two riddles to determine the word each is referencing. These riddles are based on word analysis to build letters one at a time rather than big-picture idea concepts....
Curated OER
Riddles
What does it mean? Learners read four riddles, connecting them to the pictures they are describing. Consider challenging them to cover up the pictures before attempting the riddles, as this will greatly increase the difficulty. Next,...
Curated OER
Mysterious Plot Problems
Your readers explore plot patterns in mysteries by identifying problems first in Two-Minute Mysteries by Donald J. Sobol and then in The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin. To gain access to the worksheets, graphic organizers and riddles...
Curated OER
Boat Safety Math
What should you always carry on a boat? Learners must solve ten addition and subtraction problems to solve this riddle. The equations include single and double-digit numbers, but no negative numbers are used. They also don't need to...
Curated OER
Mr. P's Life
With only indirect information, can your mathematicians figure out how old Mr. P is? This secondary mathematics learning exercise has algebra students examining 9 pieces of information about Mr. P's life, each of which is integral to...
Curated OER
Color Tile Riddles
In this color the tile riddles learning exercise, students solve and complete 6 different puzzles that include various riddles to solve. First, they determine the number that is represented by what color according to the information...
Curated OER
Stone Soup
First graders examine the use of logic, deduction, and inference to determine the answers to riddles. They listen to a teacher read aloud of Heather Forest's, Stone Soup before discussing the story which gauges their comprehension....