Riddle me this

Whilst puzzling out interesting ways to spice up my classes I popped onto eslprintables.com in search of ideas. I was reminded by an ESL veteran about the joy of riddles. Making students think outside the box to get them focused on class and not just throwing them in with a grammar exercise or speaking exam part jazzed up as a game. I found students used lots of the speculation language we went over last week without using the prompt sheet.

I'd done a riddle of the day a few years ago with an intensive FCE class and it had worked wondrfully well and by the end of the four week course the riddles were taking less and less time because students had started to think so far out of the box that the box had become a dot on the horizon. 

I started with this little one yesterday as we've been working on stereotypes this week.

Acting on an anonymous phone call, the police raid a house to arrest a suspected murderer. They don't know what he looks like but they know his name is John and that he is inside the house. The police bust in on a carpenter, a lorry driver, a mechanic and a fireman all playing poker. Without hesitation or communication of any kind, they immediately arrest the fireman. How did they know they'd arrested the right person?

I reminded the students we were working on stereotypes and that the carpenter, lorry driver and mechanic all had something in common. Then after stressing that HIS name was John a bright spark finally clicked and pointed out that the three former occupations were not gender specific and that they could as easily be women as men. Whereas the fireman by definition had to be a man. 

The class are now eagerly anticipating next week's riddle. I think I'll go with this little classic. 

How could a baby fall out of a twenty-story building onto the ground and live?

'til next time