The activity my students ask for the most…

After reading the title, you are probably thinking I am going to share an amazing resource related to Business that my students love. Sadly, this is not directly related to Business, but I think it plays an important role in the classroom and is worth the time to integrate into a lesson each week. This can be used for more than Business Management, but I think it pairs well with the skills needed to be successful in the course.

So, you are probably wondering what I am talking about…

Logic puzzles!

Is that what you guessed it would be? Probably not.

I only do this with my high level (HL) group due to time constraints, but it could probably be adapted for a standard level (SL) class as well. So how does it work?

I break down the logic puzzles into four different categories to allow all students to thrive with the logic puzzles. They include math, grid logic, word logic and pure logic. I usually pair the students up or put them in groups of three, and the team with the highest points at the end of each term wins. Let me explain each type of puzzle a bit.

The first one tests the students’ math skills. It requires them to calculate quickly and think about how to solve the problems. I think this gives them mental flexibility when trying to solve Finance problems on the exam. Here is an example of one that I would give my students.

There are more than 24,000 solutions to this problem and it drives students crazy when they don’t get one very quickly. But it teaches them perseverance and determination to finally get a correct solution.

Next, I like to what I call grid logic. It might have a technical term, but I get all of my puzzles from Puzzle Baron. It involves verbal clues and a grid to eliminate choices. It is essential to teach students how to use the grid first, but once they get it, they really enjoy it. It looks like this.

It takes them going over clues multiple times and working together with their partner to decipher and decode the information. This could be related to reading over the case study and making connections to the questions they are being asked.

The next type of logical is verbal logic for students who are better with language than other types of skills. These are called cryptograms. Students have to have a fairly high level of English to access these puzzles especially because they generally use a play on words for set phrases to make jokes. Here is an example.

Finally, and probably the hardest for the students is pure logic. This isn’t about racing to find the answer but building up logical connections to solve the puzzle. Students struggle the most with this, but it is likely the most related to their work in the course. Students have to understand how things go into order logically just like they do on extended questions of 6, 10 and even 17 marks. If this is true, it leads to another consequence making something else true.

What do you think of these puzzles? Would your students enjoy them? Let me know in the comments below.