Lesson of the Week: Layout Puzzles

Layout Puzzles by Eugene Lee (South Korea ETA)

When teaching English as a second language, it’s important to emphasize four key language skills: reading, writing, speaking, and listening. Each of these skills comes with its own unique set of challenges as we teachers struggle to find ways to employ fresh, engaging teaching techniques without stagnating. With listening especially, it can be difficult to think of things to do beyond simply playing an audio recording or video and having students answer questions.

Recognizing his students’ interest in solving puzzles, South Korea ETA Eugene Lee used a logic puzzle lesson to help his high school students practice their listening skills. After listening to the teacher list out facts about a situation, students determine in what order to place certain objects/people. More advanced students can branch out from this to create their own puzzles and read them to classmates.

You can download the materials for this lesson below. Some alterations of character names will be needed in order to make the activities more relatable for your students’ schools and cultural contexts.

  1. Presentation File
  2. Teacher Prompts
  3. Student Worksheet

That closes us out for November, but come back during December for the last Lessons of the Week of 2017!

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