Brain Teasers are ideal classroom activities and can be used in a number of different ways. Essentially a brain teaser is a puzzle where your students have to think to find the solution. There's often an element of thinking laterally (or in an unconventional way) so that it isn't always the case that the best language student in the class solves the problem first. Also, it's often necessary to read the question very carefully to find the answer.
Classroom Usage
There are different ways to use brain teasers in class.
- As a 5 minute activity either as a warm up for a full lesson or perhaps to fill in a few minutes at the end of class.
- To get the class talking. Ideally get the class into small groups so they can discuss and share ideas to come up with the solution. If you do it like this you can either give the whole class a brain teaser on the board or perhaps hand out a sheet of brain teasers for each group to work through.
- To look at grammatical points. Brain teasers are ideal for speculation and giving your students pracice with modals:
It could be...
I think it might be...
He may have...
And so on!
And of course the brain teaser itself is important. It should be short and simple to write up on the board in a sentence or less. Ideally it will also contain a useful grammatical point! But the best brain teasers are those which seem very simple, but do in fact contain a hidden trick to them. When you use brain teasers with your class for the first time, write one up on the board and go through it together. They will soon see that the obvious is not always the correct. Then allow the class to play with brain teasers in small groups.
Good TEFL Brain Teasers
- Mary's father had 5 daughters: Nana, Nene, Nini, Nono and... what was the name of the fifth daughter?
| Answer
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| Mary. The class is likely to suggest Nunu since it's a logical progression from the other names, but in fact the name of the daughter was given in the question: Mary's father...
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- Some months have 30 days, some have 31 days, how many have 28 days?
| Answer
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| 12 - that is, all of them!
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- Divide 100 by a half and add 10. What is the answer?
| Answer
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| 210 - many people give the answer as 60. This is about the value and importance of prepositions: divide in half or divide by a half
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- Which is correct, "The yolk of the egg is white." or "The yolk of the egg are white."
| Answer
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| Neither: the yolk of an egg is yellow! This can be adapted for all kinds of countable/uncountable nouns to drive the point home!
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- There is one word in the English language that is always pronounced incorrectly. What is it?
- What do these words have in common: age, blame, curb, dance, evidence, fence, gleam, harm, interest, jam, kiss, latch, motion, nest, order, part, quiz, rest, signal, trust, use, view, win, x-ray, yield, zone
| Answer
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| They can all be used as nouns or verbs. You can do this as a class question by writing up one or two words and keep on adding them till someone finds the answer!
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- What occurs once in June, once in July and twice in August?
