View Content #27970

Shannon L. Hill, M.A., is a teacher of high school Spanish, including AP Spanish Language and Culture, at The John Cooper School in The Woodlands, Texas. Her career spans 28 years of teaching experience at both the high school and college levels.

This activity is designed for use in my AP Spanish Language and Culture classes. Students will be called upon to speak, listen, read, and sometimes write in the course of this activity. Teams of students will use critical thinking, deductive reasoning, and problem solving skills to successfully complete this activity.

Objectives:

Learners will be able to:

• Develop critical thinking and problem solving skills
• Communicate with their teammates only in Spanish, which will require circumlocution, creativity, and both speaking and listening skills
• Acquire and retain information related to the Basque witch trials of the 17th Century

Materials: PowerPoint  that provides context, Puzzles (included in this file)

Procedure:

1. Review the rules. Empasize that no translation engines are allowed.

2. Divide students into teams of 3 or 4 (larger teams become too cumbersome.)

3. Each team chooses one of the available colors.

4. Give each team the first puzzle (all of the puzzles used are available in this file) and any introductory context. This PowerPoint  has the puzzles as well as answers for teachers. For teachers who don't speak Spanish, the first puzzle provides background historical information and is solved by using the underlined letters. The second puzzle provides more specific information related to the Basque witch trials, and the answer is discovered by noting the miscapitalized letters. The third puzzle requires learners to count letters to discern the targeted Basque word. The fourth puzzle requires learners to find mispellings to uncover critical terminology. The fifth puzzle requires learners to equate letters with certain numbers to uncover a critical historical fact. The sixth puzzle requires learners to look at all of their other answer to uncover the final word.

5. Each team must solve their puzzle and present it to the instructor to earn the next puzzle in the series. They will repeat this process until they solve all puzzles. Please note that they should keep each completed puzzle as they will need all the pieces for the final challenge.

Notes:

Depending on the types of puzzles in play, students may be called upon to send and receive emails, visit websites, research clues online, solve equations, break codes, and apply all information acquired to complete the series.

It is critical to encourage persistence and problem solving, as well as to monitor consistent use of the target language. The competitive nature of the task encourages students to stay focused, and the collaborative problem-solving aspect forces them to manipulate and apply the information, which in turn reinforces retention.

Six puzzles typically take a team of four students about an hour to complete.