53. Puzzles in the Classroom

Brittany 0:00

Puzzles. They're all around us. Every day. We watch them: Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy, Password. We play them: Candy Crush, Royal Match, Tetris. We even build them: Jigsaws, Legos, Rubik's Cubes. Yet when it comes to the classroom, we often don't find puzzles in play. So today, Ellie,

Ellie 0:31

hello

Brittany 0:32

and I are here to change that as we discuss puzzles in the classroom on today's episode of the teaching Toolbox Podcast.

Ellie 0:43

Before we dive into the ways we can use puzzles in the classroom, let's chat about how puzzles can benefit our middle school students.

Brittany 0:52

Puzzles offer so many benefits for students cognitively, socially, emotionally. Puzzles enhance critical thinking and problem solving skills. Puzzles help students learn to analyze situations, recognize patterns, and develop strategies to find solutions. This process helps them improve their ability to think logically. For instance, working through a complex jigsaw puzzle requires students to consider the shape, the color, the fit of each piece, which then in turn sharpens their attention to detail and helps with their spatial reasoning. Puzzles are shown to help improve mental speed, concentration and short term memory a research study at the University of Michigan showed that doing 25 minutes of pattern recognition puzzles a day, kind of like Simon, can boost your IQ by 4 points!

Ellie 1:54

My gosh, that's awesome. And I totally forgot about Simon. I love that. And we had that when I was young and when my kids were young. Some puzzles offer social benefits. They can promote social interaction and teamwork. Puzzles like escape room challenges, pentominos, or group brainteasers require collaboration and communication, and when middle school students work together to solve a puzzle, they practice important social skills like listening and sharing ideas. Collaborative efforts like these can foster a sense of community and build stronger relationships, which are pretty crucial during the middle school years.

Brittany 2:35

We just did our first escape room as a family, and we figured we would just blow that thing out of the water. We failed, but it was fun. It was mainly my husband's fault because he started doing chemical math. And I'm like, they're not going to have you do chemical math during a general escape room. Yes. Anyways.

Ellie 3:03

Well, that sounds fun.

Brittany 3:05

Puzzles can even have an emotional benefit. Completing puzzles can make students feel better as they have small successes, develop patience, and they can increase their persistence muscles and even increase dopamine production, according to the Center for Discovery, Innovation and Development. As students work through challenging puzzles and eventually achieve the satisfaction of solving it, they build their confidence and their abilities and learn to deal with frustration in a healthy, constructive way.

Ellie 3:38

I start my day with a word puzzle, and I have to say that when I solve them, it makes me feel pretty good. So I feel like I get my little dopamine production there at the beginning of the day, and, you know, sets me up nicely for other successes during the day. So now that we have some idea about the benefits Brittany, what are some types of puzzles you've used in the classroom?

Brittany 4:02

I've used puzzles in social studies to help students learn their states, capitals, flags, the outlines, and abbreviations. I've also used that same puzzle template and covered every country in the world by continent along with their capitals, outlines, flags and stuff. So those studying states or countries, you can use puzzles to help students master their geography.

Ellie 4:32

Oh, that sounds awesome.

Brittany 4:33

I've also used puzzles in my social studies classroom during my Colorado curriculum. These are digital puzzles that students have to construct alone or in small groups. They're on Google Slides, and as the students move the pieces and construct the puzzle of a prominent Colorado feature or landscape item, they unearth a trivia question about that particular feature or time in history, and then they have to answer that question to move on to the next puzzle. And there are 10 puzzles in all, and each puzzle has more and more pieces. So it starts out with just like 25 pieces, and it eventually gets up to like 100 or 200 pieces.

Ellie 5:19

Wow, that's a lot. That's exciting. That sounds like a lot of fun. I wonder how long it takes them.

Brittany 5:25

We never got through all 10 puzzles. Some kids would just continue to do them for like, fast finisher, fun activity. But we'd get through about five. So,

Ellie 5:36

oh, that's great.

Brittany 5:37

And then lastly, I used three digital jigsaw puzzles as a team building activity, students will work in small groups at the beginning of the year to build a digital jigsaw puzzle of a natural or national feature, like a statue, but they wouldn't have all the pieces. Some key, prominent pieces would be missing, like maybe the placard that said what the statue was of,

Ellie 6:05

okay.

Brittany 6:06

And then through this, they would learn that we have to decipher history when not all the pieces are known,

Ellie 6:15

very good.

Brittany 6:16

And so I have a blog post about this and how it works, and I will put that link in the show notes. How have you used puzzles in the classroom, Ellie?

Ellie 6:27

In math class, we often use logic puzzles. These have some great additional benefits that we might not have mentioned, like making predictions, testing your options, and then revising your thinking. I have a blog post about using logic puzzles in middle school that we can link in the show notes, and that one actually has a free Halloween logic puzzle that can be downloaded.

Brittany 6:50

I love logic puzzles.

Ellie 6:52

Yeah, me too. And we use the pentalaminos Every year, which we talked about in episode 45 we talked all about how we can use those on the first day of school, but students liked using those individually and in groups throughout the rest of the school year. Magic squares are great that we would throw in sometimes. I did create one of these for decimal operations once which I had planned to make more, but I never, I never did. That's in one of my blog posts as well. And then math crosswords, or cross numbers are another great type of puzzle. I have some of those that I used math dates to create cross number puzzles and find a word find a number puzzles.

Brittany 7:31

I have to be honest, I've never done one of those.

Ellie 7:35

What a cross number?

Brittany 7:35

A math crossword Are they like a crossword puzzle, but with numbers, and so the numbers have to be similar across and down.

Ellie 7:46

Yeah. So if you might have a multiplication problem for one across and then one down is a division problem, and where they would intersect, the number would have to be the same number in both problems where they would intersect. Okay, so the ones I made are with my math dates. And so for those, those are expressions that they would have to simplify and figure out what the numbers of the date would be. And those would be in the cross number puzzle.

Brittany 8:12

Your math dates are so cool. You should link those in the show notes too.

Ellie 8:17

Okay, we could do that. Thank you. And then we have Sudoku puzzles and KenKen puzzles.

Brittany 8:23

Oh yeah, KenKen puzzles. We used to do those in math class. I love those all the time. When I taught math, we typically do a small packet or two. We'd have like, two pages printed back to back of some KenKen puzzles that we picked out from that week. Those were great fun. And if you don't know what KenKen puzzles are, you can check out the website, kenkenpuzzle.com We'll link that in the show notes as well, because you can receive free math puzzles in your email each week from them.

Ellie 8:53

Oh, awesome. And so some of these puzzle types we used as part of instruction or on a sub day, and others were in fast finisher folders so that when students finished, they could go and grab them, and they'd have that access. Many years, I also kept a jigsaw puzzle on the back table that students could work on during study hall or as a fast finisher activity. And sometimes I would work on it after school, because I really liked doing those, and students really enjoy working on those as well. I don't know how many kids do puzzles these days that you know you put out a puzzle at home and work on it. I don't know how many families do that.

Brittany 9:33

I don't know how many do traditional like jigsaw puzzles anymore. I think they're more used to the rush hour or the canoodle type puzzles.

Ellie 9:43

But as we talked about in the beginning, there are definitely some benefits to the jigsaw puzzle, thinking about the shape, the color, the fit of every piece, and their spatial reasoning, and their attention to detail. So I think those are great types of puzzles to get into the classroom if you are able to just set one up on the side, and students have that opportunity to use it when they like.

Brittany: 10:04

Yes, definitely,

Ellie: 10:06

If you are teaching ELA and you need a couple ELA puzzle ideas, you could use puzzles as prompts for creative writing assignments. For instance, you could give students a mystery puzzle and have them write a story that explains the solution or the situation. Or you could use picture puzzles to inspire descriptive writing exercises.

Brittany: 10:28

Great idea.

Ellie: 10:29

Yeah, you might use crossword puzzles for vocab, or even create a jigsaw puzzle that has vocab terms and the meanings on it. And so as they complete the jigsaw puzzle, those terms and meanings match up or find a word puzzles with the definition as a clue and the vocabulary term in the find a word or crossword.

Brittany: 10:49

Great. And finally, place some puzzle games in your indoor recess bucket, if you teach in an elementary school or have indoor game days, occasionally. Finger puzzles, like we saw in the old days, where you had to get the ring through the knotted rope or out of the twisted nail. Those still exist, and they're good for kids to ponder and try to play with. And the triangle with the golf pegs, where you jump pegs, and then you remove the pegs you jumped and you try to get down to just one peg left on the board. Those are still around as well. And then there are more advanced contemporary trademark games, like Rush Hour, Move the Bus, IQ, Canoodle, Genius, and, of course, the old classic Simon.

Ellie: 11:36

Yeah, that peg jumping one, I think was it called high Q. Like, way back?

Brittany: 11:40

I don't remember ever having a name.

Ellie: 11:43

We had one that was in the shape of a plus sign.

Brittany: 11:46

Oh,

Ellie: 11:47

and I'm pretty sure it was called haikyu. But my brother actually made me one of those out of wood. Like he made a wooden base. He made all these wooden pegs. Think he made one for all of his siblings. So we all had one,

Brittany: 11:59

nice

Ellie: 12:00

but I love that game.

Brittany: 12:02

When my brother in law recently passed away, at his funeral, they gave away a puzzle game that he loved to play, which was you got six steel nails, and then you got one nail that was punched like all the way down into a block of wood. You couldn't get that one nail out, but the other six nails you could. And it says on the block of wood, the goal is to balance six nails on one nail.

Ellie: 12:33

Oh,

Brittany: 12:34

and he had a way that you can do it, and my nephew showed me how you do it. And it's very interesting to see how you solve that puzzle. But he, he used to love that puzzle, so I have that on my dresser now.

Ellie: 12:48

Oh, nice. Well, incorporating puzzles is a nice idea, but when or how often can we use them if we don't have a lot of time during our instructional periods? Well, you can start out by finding or creating just one type of puzzle per unit that can be part of daily instruction or used during a center time or as a review activity. You could even have students create a couple puzzles that you could then print and copy for the class.

Brittany: 13:17

One way to incorporate puzzles is to make it part of the morning routine, as students are preparing for the class and settling in, have a puzzle on the board or on the wall for them to solve. It could be like boggle if you're more ELA or science, or it could be Sudoku if you are math, or it might be a timeline puzzle if you're in social studies.

Ellie: 13:41

You could quickly add a puzzle center in your classroom, like a jigsaw puzzle on a side table, or some fast finisher printable puzzles like the Sudoku or crosswords, or make that bucket of puzzle games.

Brittany: 13:54

And you could include a puzzle in your newsletter each week or month and give students a bonus point or reward for showing you proof that they played it or attempted to solve it.

Ellie: 14:04

Oh, I like that idea. As you're thinking about adding puzzles to your classroom, think about what types of puzzles you like best. If you choose your favorite puzzles to incorporate into the classroom, students may pick up on your love of the puzzles, and they'll begin to enjoy the many benefits puzzles can provide.

Brittany: 14:22

We hope puzzles are a tool in your teaching toolbox. If you've got some favorite puzzles, let us know on IG or Facebook. We'll talk to you soon.

Ellie: 14:31

Bye.