This lesson combines students' love of word games and drawing to promote critical thinking.
Objectives
Students
explore word and picture puzzle techniques.
interpret word and picture puzzles.
create word and picture puzzles.
Keywords
words, puzzle, drawing, game, vocabulary
Materials Needed
computers with Internet access (optional)
chalkboard and chalk or large paper and marker
tips for rebus puzzles (available online)
sample word and picture puzzles (available online)
paper and pencils
Lesson Plan
Word and picture puzzles are fun, educational, and well received by students. "Droodles" are picture puzzles that may be interpreted with words in many different ways. There is no single correct answer with a droodle -- every reasonable response is as acceptable as the next!
To get started with this activity, introduce your students to the droodle with the Exploratorium's The Meaning of Droodles page. If you prefer, you may print this page and use the information as the basis for instruction.
Draw some sample droodles from The Droodles Homepage on the board or on large paper so that all members of the class can view them, and have your students share their ideas about what the pictures may mean. (If you plan to leave this lesson behind for a substitute teacher, you might print off a handful of droodles from the archive to leave behind with this lesson.) Then give students time to create a droodle and have the class or a few partners attempt to interpret it.
Extension activities:
Using IMOK. UROK. from the Exploratorium, have your students write conversations in puzzle form. They may even illustrate the conversations as cartoons. Everyone will enjoy finding the meanings behind these unique puzzles.
Assessment
The teacher may collect student work (original droodles and picture/word puzzles) for evaluation. All satisfactory student-created puzzles must be appropriate for the classroom and be representative of the puzzles introduced in the lesson. The teacher will also observe students as they work together in exchanging and solving puzzles.
Lesson Plan Source
Education World
Submitted By
Cara Bafile
National Standards
LANGUAGE ARTS: English GRADES K - 12 NL-ENG.K-12.6 Applying Knowledge NL-ENG.K-12.12 Applying Language Skills
TECHNOLOGY GRADES K - 12 NT.K-12.1 Basic Operations and Concepts
