I'm going to try something new this semester with my regular/inclusion English II class. Over the Christmas break, my wife and I picked up a puzzle book (think escape room in a book). We've done this before and some of those books can be very hard. This one is not overly hard, but not overly easy either. A good enough mix. The book is The Puzzle Book of the Brothers Grimm.
There are four fairy tales that you have to work through - Hansel and Gretel, Little Red Riding Hood, Mother Hulda, and Rapunzel. The links are to Google Docs I have of the original Grimm's tale. I figured most of my students have probably not read the original, so maybe I'll use those as texts in my class and may add some state test reading comprehension questions to go with them later. You are welcome to them to use as you would like. The Hansel and Gretel tale is six pages long, but the other three are only about three pages long. You can buy the puzzle book on Amazon if you are interested.
How does this fit into my class? Well, my regular level and inclusion classes often struggle with looking past plot level. Anything to get them thinking critically helps. Since the puzzles themselves are fairly short, I'm thinking it might be a fun warm-up activity to breaks them into groups of two or three and let them try and figure it out. Each puzzle comes with three clues (on different pages), so I can factor that in and let them buy the clue with part of their winnings. In the book, you score 5 "reeds" for each correctly guessed riddle, minus 1 reed for each clue and wrong answer. I am using "Bobcat Paw Prints" in my class for incentives, so I will just substitute those. Here is what a typical puzzle looks like:
It's always like this - two page spread and many of the puzzles are visual like this, which I think my regular students will find appealing.
This may flop, but I've enjoyed figuring out the puzzles for the first fairy tale, so I figured I would go for it!
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