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Puzzle Brain Breaks - Critical Thinking, Collaboration, and Communication

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I’ve struggled a bit this year with getting my students to collaborate and communicate, so I am always experimenting with different ways to encourage these skills. While I’ve built quite a few collaboration and communication activities in our content, I also occasionally like to provide students opportunities to think critically and collaborate outside of my Environmental Earth Science Curriculum.

Today I wanted to share two “Brain Break” activities that I’ve used to get my students talking, collaborating, and thinking critically.

Rebus Puzzles
I have long been a fan of Rebus puzzles as a warm up or bell ringer. The trick is making sure students don’t shout out answer the minute they figure it out. I use Pear Deck to have student first make their guesses. I then have them share their answers with their tables. Finally we have a class discussion focused on the clues that led us to the answer.  This works really well when students come up with more than one reasonable answer. 

Student Pear Rebus Pear Deck (Try it yourself. I love the ability to give feedback to students live in Pear Deck.)
Slide Deck with the Rebus Answers (Later in the year we will shift from word based puzzles to more of the picture based Rebus puzzles and stories that the students will create. Eric Curts has some great posts connected to using Google Docs to create Rebus puzzles and stories.)

TED-ED Riddles 

These riddles are a great way to collaborate in small groups or as a whole class. I typically play the video in class without letting students access their devices. We typically watch the video a few times as the students start in small groups or work with partners. We then expand to a whole class discussion. I love that teachers can use, tweak, or completely redo any lesson featured on TED-Ed, or create these riddle lessons from scratch. We’ve had some great discussions on solving problems as an offshoot of these riddles. 

Do you have a favorite puzzle resource or activity that you use with students? If you have questions or ideas, please share in the comments below. #BetterTogether #HappyLearning

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