1. Download the file for the activity suggested in the MED section and make copies for students.

2. Have the beam projector ready to show the video for the second activity.

3. Tell students they are going to work with a very interesting activity, a mystery to be solved.

4.Ask students to define 'enigma'.

5. Distribute the worksheet and draw students’ attention towards the picture of Einstein.

6.  Tell students it’s believed that at a young age, Albert Einstein created this riddle. (Eventually, it made its way as a head-scratcher activity that even challenges your brightest students.)

7. Guide students through the activity, they need to use logic to solve the nationality, pet, drink, color, and hobby of each homeowner.

8. Ask students to read the 15 sentences to start gathering information to solve the riddle. Remind students that they do not necessarily need to start working with sentence 1 in order to find the answers so suggest they circle pieces of information they find easy to work with first and start writing it in the corresponding column.

9. This note comes in the original instructions, “Because of its difficulty, we have provided answers to Einstein’s riddle below. But if you’re brave enough, you can give it a shot with just the clues.”

Einstein’s Riddle Questions

• 1. The British man lives in the red house.
• 2. The Swedish man keeps dogs as pets.
• 3. The Danish man drinks tea.
• 4. The German plays soccer.
• 5. The green house’s owner drinks coffee.
• 6. The owner who plays baseball has birds.
• 7. The owner who plays basketball lives next to the one who keeps cats.
• 8. The Norwegian lives in the first house.
• 9. The owner who plays the violin drinks beer.
• 10. The owner of the yellow house plays the piano.
• 11. The owner living in the center house drinks milk.
• 12. The owner who keeps the horse lives next to the one who plays the piano.
• 13. The green house is on the immediate left of the white house.
• 14. The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.
• 15. The owner who plays basketball lives next to the one who drinks water.
•  

Einstein’s Riddle Answers

• 1. Norwegian, Yellow, Cat, Water, Piano
• 2. Danish, Blue, Horse, Tea, Basketball
• 3. British, Red, Birds, Milk, Baseball
• 4. German, Green, Fish, Coffee, Soccer
• 5. Swedish, White, Dogs, Beer, Violin

10. Decide beforehand which ones you want to show and work with since the whole video takes 13 minutes. You may want to choose some of them and consider time as well since students will need time to work on the clues and get to an answer.

11. Model the activity with riddle #1: about the scorpion and work out the answer with the students.

12. Play the rest of the riddles chosen by you and pause the video to let students discuss and find the answer using the clues.

13. If the class has found the answer, continue with the next riddle, but if they haven’t, ask them WH_questions to get to the answer.

14. Encourage students to participate in this fun activity which is going to trigger speaking skills.

15. Ask students if they know any riddles of this type in Spanish, and let them try them in class.

1. Download the file for the activity suggested in the MED section and make copies for students.

2. Have the beam projector ready to show the video.

3. Tell students they are going to play a game where they need to ask questions so review question format in present simple and with WH_. Write some examples on the board.

4. Students are going to work in groups of 4 so consider the total number of copies you’ll need.

5. Explain to students that instead of answering questions like in a quiz show, they are making the questions. Maybe students are familiar with the Classic America TV show, ‘Jeopardy’.

6. Each card has a word with a point value. Similar to Jeopardy, you create 5 categories.

7. Each category has 5 questions with harder cards as a higher point value.

8. Ask students to pick the category and point value. After flipping over the card, the fastest group to raise their hands make a question.

9. Give a countdown for how fast they have to respond. Don’t be afraid to give negative points if they are too slow to respond or make an incorrect question.

10. Discuss with students how they were working with their logic, critical and creative thinking with this type of game.

11. Here you have the categories (taken from the site of the activity)

• Quiz Questions Answers
• CAPITALS
• 100$ – London (What is the capital of England?)
• 200$ – Ottawa (What is the capital of Canada?)
• 300$ – Lima (What is the capital of Peru?)
• 400$ – Ulaanbaatar (What is the capital of Mongolia?)
• 500$ – Accra (What is the capital of Ghana?)
• ANIMALS
• 100$ – Cheetah (What is the fastest animal)
• 200$ – Giraffe (What animal has the longest neck?)
• 300$ – Reindeer (What animal pulls Santa’s sleigh?)
• 400$ – Whale (What is the largest animal in the ocean?)
• 500$ – Turtle (What animal had the longest life span?)
• FOOD & DRINK
• 100$ – Sushi (What is the national dish of Japan?)
• 200$ – Grapes (What is wine made of?)
• 300$ – Maple Syrup (What type of syrup is extracted from maple syrup)
• 400$ – Kimchi (What is the national food of Korea?)
• 500$ – Nasi Goreng (What is fried rice in Indonesian?)
• SPORTS
• 100$ – Soccer (What is the world’s most popular sport?)
• 200$ – Baseball (What sport does Ichiro Suzuki play?)
• 300$ – Ice Hockey (What is the most popular sport in Canada?)
• 400$ – Badminton (What sport do you use a racquet and shuttle?)
• 500$ – Curling (What sport do you throw rocks on the ice into rings?)
• WORLD
• 100$ – Mount Everest (What is the tallest mountain in the world?)
• 200$ – Antarctica (What is the coldest continent in the world?)
• 300$ – China (What country had the highest population?)
• 400$ – Alaska (What is the coldest state in the United States?)
• 500$ – Dead Sea (What is the lowest place on Earth?)
• SCIENCE
• 100$ – Jupiter (What is the largest planet in our solar system?)
• 200$ – Isaac Newton (Who discovered gravity?)
• 300$ – The Brain (What body part controls how you think?)
• 400$ – H2O (What is the symbol for water?)
• 500$ – Alexander Graham Bell (Who invented the telephone?)

12. This activity can be played in groups of 3, and each group is given 3 cards face down. For this first round, try to give the same cards to all groups.

13. Students take turns in their teams, take a card, read it aloud, and start working on the solution by discussing, identifying clues, etc.

14. Set a time limit for the first round, but ask students to raise their hand as soon as they have the answer and share it with the class.

15. If the class has a different answer, discuss and become into an agreement. Chances are that none of them are right and then, you can give them the right answer.

16. The same procedure is repeated for the other two cards. However, you may vary the confirmation of the answers by asking two groups to compare their answers and present conclusions to the class.

17. If time allows, you can have a second round and this time give different cards to the groups.

18. Ask groups to present their case and solution to the class and discuss them.

1. Have the beam projector ready to show the PowerPoint presentation suggested in the MED section and download the file for the second activity to make copies for students. The second page has the answers, you do not need to print that. I’ll include them here at the end. 

2. Ask students how good they are at solving mysteries and ask them to describe how they solved one.

3. Tell students they are going to see some pictures, 4 per slide, that have something in common and they need to guess the correct word.

4. There is a clue for students to identify - the number of letters in the word, so they need to pay close attention to that.

5. Decide if you want students to play individually or in pairs. It all depends of the conditions of your class.

6. Show the first example and do it with the class so they can see how it works. (There are clues for you at the end).

7. Help students with asking guiding questions, and when the word is guessed, students have to make sure they know, understand all the meanings, and that they know which part of the speech they are.

8. Tell students that there can be more meanings to the word presented, )you can use it as a clue, or as additional information after the word has been guessed.)

9. Distribute the worksheet and ask students what they think they are going to do based on what they see ‘letters and numbers’

10. Tell students this activity is called, ‘cryptogram’ a puzzle to solve by converting numbers into letters. The focus of this activity is to exercise language awareness (structure, vocabulary, and grammar) and acquire some general knowledge about quotes of famous individuals in the process.

11. Draw students’ attention towards the text to be completed and ask them to get the letter numbers into the box and vice-versa to discover the quote that is hidden.

12. Ask students to work individually and set a time limit, a short one preferably, so you can set another one for them to finish the activity in pairs.

13. Once students finish the first activity, they will work faster with the next two.

14. Decide if you want to award the point to the first students who finish, the ones who get the answers right, and/or the ones who can talk about the quotes.

Answers:

• If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.
• Nelson Mandela
• I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.
• You must be the change you wish to see in the world.
• Mahatma Gandhi