Literacy Resource 3: Logic games

After the discovery of how successful Mad Libs are at engaging students as well as the realization of all the learning opportunities involved in this fun puzzles, I took a trip to Barnes and Noble in search of more games like these and found a wealth of mind-stretching activities that are fun ways of building literacy. Here are a few books and activities that I found especially valuable:

"The Everything Pencil Puzzles"
"Martin Gardner Perplexing Puzzles"
"Gladstone's Games to Go"
"The Everything Word Games"
"DistrAction"
"USA Today Logic Games"

Some of the activities included in these books and others are as follows:

Logic games
Picture Puzzles
Story prompts/ endings
Scramblers
Fill-in Cartoons
Picture story-prompts
Rebus puzzles
Cryptograms
Word Searches
5 Minute Mysteries
Word Ladders
Chronograms
Riddles
Twenty-questions

There are ample resources online for these types of games that can be found with little searching. If you have some money to spend, Barnes and Noble has a fantastic selection of books in various formats, or most of these books can be found on Amazon for as little and $0.01 plus shipping. You can also have students make up their own.

These can be great activities for ELA students in part because of their use of cultural or common knowledge that can help build vocabulary in areas cultural understanding. I find that a major barrier in reading is a misunderstanding of these social conventions that native speakers take for granted. These are also great resources to keep on hand in any classroom and any content as they can be great educational time-fillers for those students that get done early or for days when the lesson plan runs a little short. Students can also build social skills through working through these activities by working together to solve these puzzles.