Keep Learning Fun with Riddles!

Hello, Teaching Friends!

If you want to keep the fun in teaching and learning, try using RIDDLES!

I'm a big fan of making learning fun, because when kids are having fun, they want...

more,

more,

MORE!

... and what teacher would ever argue with a request for more learning?  When your students are having fun while they learn { I'm talking about the ... ahem.. "controlled" variety of fun, not the Halloween-on-a-Monday or running-around-screaming kinds of fun, noisy is fine, but no thank you to craziness ;) }, their brains are actively engaged and they're learning more.  

Besides, when they're having fun, I'll bet that you probably are, too!

1.   They encourage the development of extended attention. You've got to keep listening to get all the clues!

2.   Riddles help develop your students' listening skills, like attention to detail and focusing on the speaker. What a great social skill to have - listen all the way to the end of what your friend is saying,

3.   They are a superb way to teach using key details, making inferences, and drawing conclusions, critical skills no matter how you label them, and whether you're a Common Core district or not!

4.   Riddles encourage the use of mental images, a vital comprehension skill. Try solving a riddle without building some kind of mental image or even a graphic organizer in your mind, and changing it as new clues are added!  We do this as adults without thinking about it, but solving riddles together is one great way to model for your students the act and the language of how to develop and use mental images.

5.   Vocabulary! Our little learners are flooded with Tier 2 and Tier 3 vocabulary in November.  Once the words have been taught and your kiddos have had a variety of experiences to help them sink in, use riddles as a great review tool.

6.  Solving riddles encourages the use of connections, a comprehension skill we all try so hard to develop in our students.  Connecting the clues with schema and prior knowledge is a skill that takes intentional practice, and lots of it!  As you talk through the thinking process with your little learners, those skills will grow! When you're working together to solve a riddle, it's a great time to ask the questions, "What's your schema? How can what you already know help you figure this out?"

7.   Riddles are incredibly engaging! Everyone wants to play along, everyone wants to guess, and to make a reasonable guess, you've got to ...LISTEN and THINK! 

1.   Riddles are great as a quick supplement to your calendar time. A riddle can be solved in under a minute - that's a lot of learning value for just a tiny snippet of time!

2.   Use as a daily whole group activity when teaching social studies (or math, science,... whatever is relevant to the topic. They are a great way to get everyone quiet and focused!

3.  Use a riddle card on your smartboard to develop reading skills like those listed above. Call on students to identify and mark on the screen key words that helped them arrive at the solution.

4.  Listen without looking.  Can your students solve the riddles without seeing the words?  That's a whole different skill set than #3!

5.  Here's a cool idea that I recently received in a customer comment - use riddle cards for a quick and easy bulletin board display! A principal I once worked for required all hallway bulletin boards to be instructional and interactive. It was a bit challenging to create these at first, but once we all got into the swing of it - wow! You could always stop for a quick learning tidbit whenever you were walking your class anywhere in the school!

6.  Put a set of riddle cards in your sub tub, teamed with a themed read-aloud and a writing activity. {Most of the riddle sets in my TpT store include a template for your students to write their own riddles.} 

7.  They're a quick and engaging literacy center activity.  You might choose to have your students just number a paper and write the answers to the riddles. Or you could shake it up a bit by turning a set of riddle cards into a Read the Room activity.  Speaking of "shake it up", how about putting the answers on little cardstock scraps and sticking them into a shake-a-bottle?

8.  A riddle card on your smartboard is a no-prep Do Now when your students arrive in the morning, or come back to the classroom after recess.

9.  Early finishers love solving riddles. Print, cut, laminate, and put on a ring - a great alternative to extra worksheets!

Here are two free sets for autumn! The first has 8 riddle cards for words that you are teaching throughout autumn...

Click here to download!

... and the second free set consists of eight cards specifically for Thanksgiving.  This set also includes a cut-and-glue activity, and is a part of a Thanksgiving Literacy resource that you can find at my TpT store.

If you're as sold as I am on using riddles in the classroom, I'd love it if you'd click to see the Riddles category at my store, where you'll find loads of riddle sets for seasons, science, math, sight words, and more.

Happy Teaching!