The Power of Puzzling
Student prediction journals in action
To echo Ian Byrd, “curiosity is powerful”. Studies show that engaging in opportunities for curiosity improves memory and learning, plus it’s just fun! I love to find ways in my classroom to allow students to be curious, struggle with confusing and challenging work, and dig through puzzles. Imagine my delight when I found this book, The Eleventh Hour: A Curious Mystery by Graeme Base, that is chock full of great puzzles, as well as word play and figurative language! I was immediately invested, and I knew my students would be too. I was not disappointed! This fun mystery offers opportunity for students to be confused and misled, and has a surprising turn at the end. Note: As Amazon associates we earn from qualifying purchases.
The book is beautifully illustrated, as are all of Base’s books, but this one includes hidden puzzles embedded in each illustration. Students must search for the embedded codes and messages in order to solve the mystery of who stole the birthday feast. While students are having a ball digging into each puzzle, they are also learning critical thinking, figurative language such as idioms and puns, and inferencing (hooray for literacy standards!) Beyond that, they are developing teamwork skills, deductive reasoning, using codes and other tools to solve mysteries, and critiquing their own reasoning and that of others (hello, math practice standards!) This picture book packs a powerful punch!
typically use this book as the introduction to my yearlong multi-disciplinary mysteries unit. The kids love it, and it’s a great way to kick off the unit with a super engaging and challenging piece of literature. It can be so hard to find challenging puzzles like this that have such great curricular connections and are fun to teach year after year! I find that using something that captures my students’ interest in such a complete way leaves them longing to learn more and excited for each new challenge I place in front of them. I also find that they reference back to their deductive thinking and code-breaking skills from this book as we get into more challenging literature like Sherlock Holmes’ “Dancing Men”, and the figurative language (puns and idioms) really speak to my students’ sense of humor and I never hear the end of the ‘dad jokes’ for the rest of the year (although they’re so punny I don’t mind–ha!).
Finding opportunities for my students to puzzle has powerful potential for learning and engagement, and I really love what this book has to offer in that respect. What other books do you use to arouse your students’ curiosity? Have you used The Eleventh Hour? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!
If you want to try out The Eleventh Hour: A Curious Mystery and see how I use it in my own classroom, check out our complete unit for the book!
By Anna and Emily
