Lesson Level: Senior Duration: 45
Lesson Title: Puzzles
Grammar and Vocabulary
Various new vocabulary may be presented in the lesson. Part of the lesson is to be able to use dictionaries.
Lesson Objectives
Students will be able to use dictionaries to check new vocabulary.
Students will be able to read a puzzle statement and discuss possible answers to it.
Materials Required
Sets of puzzle cards. Ten cards per set, enough sets to give one per group.
Paper and pens.
Preparation
Prepare the puzzle card sets. Each card should have a unique puzzle on one side. Each set should have all of the cards marked with the group number on the back.
Procedure
1 Write “Puzzles” as the lesson title.
Elicit from the class the meaning of “puzzle”.
(A question where they have enough information to solve it but must think to get the answer)
2 Put the following puzzle on the board.
A man has a wolf, a goat and a cabbage.
He comes to a river where there is a small boat.
He can take one thing at a time across the river
in the boat. If he leaves the wolf with the goat
it will eat the goat. If he leaves the goat with
the cabbage it will eat the cabbage.
How can he take everything across safely?
(Answer: man goat, man, man cabbage, man goat, man wolf, man, man goat)
3 Get ideas from the class. (Note - you can make this more interesting by having cut outs of the man, the goat, the cabbage and the boat and drawing a river on the board - then doing whatever the class says.)
4
When the puzzle is solved put the class into groups. Tell them that each group will need a dictionary. (They can use phone dictionaries.)
Tell the groups to choose a leader.
Put the sets of puzzles on the teachers desk in numbered packs.
5. Write these instructions on the board.
The group leader must come and take the FIRST card for
the group number.
Take the card back to the group.
Talk about the puzzle.
When you know the answer write it on your paper.
When you have written your answer the group leader
Must come and get the next card.
The game stops when any team says they have ten answers.
Go through the instructions making sure that all teams understand them.
Add the instruction
DO NOT WRITE ON THE CARDS!
6
Play the game. If no team has won after fifteen minutes then stop the game.
Go through the puzzles one by one.
Read the puzzle statement and elicit possible answers.
Reject wrong answers.
When you have gone through all the puzzles ask the teams how many they got right.
7 BONUS PUZZLE for an extension activity.
If time is left put this puzzle on the board and have the students offer ideas to solve it.
You have a large barrel of water.
You have two bowls. One holds exactly five litres and the other holds exactly three litres. How can you measure exactly four litres.
5 from B, 3 from 5, empty 3, 3 from 5, 5 from B, 3 from 5… 5 now contains exactly 4.
Notes
You have five apples in a basket.
How can you share the five apples
Between five children and still
Have one apple left in the basket?
Give the last apple in the basket
There are twenty blue socks,
twenty red socks and twenty
green socks in the drawer.
How many socks do you need to
take out to be sure you have a pair?
Four
A harp has four, an erhu has four
and a guitar has six?
What am I talking about?
Letters in the name
In which month do you talk
less than any other month?
February because it is shorter
Two men decide to race their horses
to a nearby town. The rules say that
the slowest horse will win.
For a long time they just sit on their
horses because whichever horse gets
there first loses. What can they do?
Switch horses
A man is driving a car.
The lights are off and there
is no moon in the sky?
Why doesn’t he hit anything?
It’s daytime
You are sitting in an airplane.
In front of you is a car.
Behind you is a horse?
Where are you?
On a fairground carousel
My friend has two children.
At least one of them is a boy.
What are the chances that they
are both boys?
One third. (To start there are four possibilities BB, BG, GB, GG as we don’t know which child is the boy. As we know at least one is a boy GG is out. That leaves BB, GB, BG - and only one of those three has the two boys)
How can you know the score of
a basketball game before it
starts?
0-0 - all games are 0-0 before they start
Paul is six feet tall.
He wears size forty two shoes.
He works in a butcher’s shop.
What does he weigh?
Meat
Possible additional riddles for strong classes
You have 10 bags with 1000 coins each. In one of the bags, all coins are forgeries. A true coin weighs 1 gram; each counterfeit coin weighs 1.1 gram.
If you have an accurate scale, which you can use only once, how can you identify the bag with the forgeries?
Take 1 coin from the first bag, 2 coins from the second bag ... ten coins from the tenth bag and weigh the picked coins. Find out how many grams does it weigh and compare it to the ideal state of having all original coins. The amount of grams (the difference) is the place of the bag with fake coins.
Two girls were born to the same mother, on the same day, at the same time, in the same month and year and yet they're not twins.
How can this be?
Triplets
