END OF YEAR BRAIN TEASER MIDDLE SCHOOL BUNDLE

35% off with this fun, no-prep End of Year brain teaser activity bundle for grades 5-8. You need two weeks of no-prep, no marking lessons! You DESERVE to watch your students chuckle while still learning! The five resources in this bundle will provide variety and smiles, while also ensuring that your students' brain cells are zinging until the very last day. Fabulous breaks for students who are spending much of their school day writing end of year assessments!

END OF YEAR BRAIN TEASER STORIES, PUZZLES & RIDDLES
The end of the year is WILD in Middle School! These end of year brain teaser stories, riddles and puzzles activities will keep grades 5-8 students happy and busy, while still exercising their critical thinking skills. The 3 brainteaser mystery stories require active listening and careful reading for inferences. The riddles, puzzles and writing races will provoke chuckles and co-operative learning. Summer holidays will seem an anti-climax in comparison!

LIST OF CONTENTS
1. 3 End of year/summer brainteaser stories

2. Summer dice roll story

3. Summer numbers to words puzzle

4. Visual logic puzzle #1

5. Summer scrambled words

6. Find the differences puzzle

7. Summer writing race #1

8. Blind group poetry

9. Writing race #2
10. School riddles mix and match

11. Visual logic puzzle #2

12. Silly book titles mix and match
13. Book titles invention
14. Summer riddles mix and match

ANSWERS

HOW TO PRESENT THE ACTIVITIES

The resource is both a PDF and a ready-to-go Easel Activity. The easiest way to present some of the activities in the PDF format, like the mysteries and writing races, is to show them on your screen. The answers to the brainteaser stories have been placed on separate pages to avoid spoilers ruining the fun of being a detective! The writing races could be completed on scraps of paper from the recycling bin.

Some of the activities, such as the anagrams, mix and match riddles and number to words activities need to be photocopied. To promote classroom spirit and to save on photocopying, these activities could be completed in pairs.

The Internet is not required for any of the games.

READERS' THEATER END OF YEAR MYSTERY SCRIPT
This Readers’ Theater end of year mystery script will grip both drama and ELA grades 5-8 classes in the last few WILD days before the summer break. It transforms students into whodunit detectives, giving them high-interest practice in reading aloud, comprehension, and even some writing. Question sheets and answers are included.

Quick peer and self assessment forms are provided, and a reading rubric to help you speedily mark your students on their vocal performances.

NUMBER OF READERS
The script is intended for 9 readers but the number of readers can easily be contracted or expanded, depending on how many groups you wish to have. When the character tag EVERYONE appears, either the whole class can read the part, (usually something short and simple like “She scores!”) or a few students who don’t have an individual role can be assigned this group reading part.

PLOT

The script gets its title, Double Trouble, from the TWO mysteries that the stars of the script - 12 year-old twins Sloane and Sporty - have to solve on the last day of the school year. One mystery, a theft, occurs at school. The second mystery shows cheating in a Little League baseball game that night. The twins enjoy solving nice, juicy mysteries, yet can’t do it all on their own. Your students have to perform detection tasks too!

STUDENT TASKS
-- Students read aloud their own individual part.
-- Students read aloud the EVERYONE responses.
-- At two separate points in the script students have to solve clues to solve the mysteries, and write their ideas on an included answer sheet.

-- After completing the script, students discuss and write on six short answer questions.
-- They write a longer paragraph response.
-- They complete the quick self and peer assessment forms.

-- They perform a few fun detection activities, such as reuniting jokes that have become separated from their punchlines.

BRAIN TEASER MYSTERIES FOR MIDDLE SCHOOL, VOL.2
Mystery short stories are fun brain teaser activities that boost reading comprehension skills. Each passage challenges students to read closely for text evidence, and to make inferences and draw conclusions to solve the mystery.
Grades 5-8 students LOVE to be detectives! They can also be incorporated into a Middle School mystery unit. The resource contains several pages of advice for students on how to write a mystery of their own, including a checklist graphic organizer. For students who are stumped for writing ideas there is a list of possible mystery solutions; they have to write the story that leads to the solution.

How to use this resource
When reading the tales as a whole class, the most obvious methods of using these 15 mysteries are to read each one out loud or to show them on your screen. The students then guess the solutions. They can also be read in small literacy groups. If you want the students to work a bit harder, they could record and explain their guesses on the included worksheet, and write their own story, using the guidelines. The solutions are on a different page from the story and its question, so that students cannot see them accidentally; that would really spoil the fun!

Content of the stories
These stories are humorous whodunnits. A few stories are ‘one offs,’ but some characters like Mr Noah Lot and his ever lively after school club, and Swindler Sweeney, have several tales. The tales vary in length from half a page to a page and a half.

Included in the resource

-- 15 vividly illustrated stories.

--An optional tips page, explaining the most common mystery/ riddle clue types.

--Two optional working pages, so students can write down their guesses, and keep a tally of how many mysteries they got right.

-- 3 fun detection activities with answers. These are riddles separated from their answers, a word code exercise and a Find the 10 Differences activity.
-- 5 pages of mystery writing advice.

-- A simple teacher rubric to mark the students’ own mini-mysteries.

60 BRAIN TEASER BRAIN TEASER MINI-MYSTERIES AND PUZZLES
These 60 brain teaser tasks are perfect to have at the ready for instant fun and critical thinking. If your grades 5-8 students are getting restless and need a change of pace or brain break, or if an activity doesn’t take as long as you predict, bring out these cards! They will create smiles, while also stretching growing brains. It doesn’t get much better really, does it?
Uses for the brain teaser cards
They are ideal for morning work, or even as class closers. Individual students will enjoy challenging themselves, or they can be used in groups to boost classroom community. Early finishers will have lots of fun with them, but they are even more fun when used in small groups, with students taking it in turns to pose the questions. Alternatively, they can be used with whole classes, with the teacher or camp leader reading the cards aloud. Yet one more alternative is that they could be used at home, with parents and siblings. Two thirds of the cards contain a variety of short stories or riddles for students to puzzle over. The other cards mostly seek for similarities between words.

How to set up the activity

If you intend to get the students to ask each other the brain teasers, photocopy

enough question and answer cards for the number of groups you wish to have.

You can leave the cards in sheets (6 to a page) or cut them into individual cards and double back the answers- whatever you prefer! Photocopy them onto card stock or laminate them and they will continue to delight many future classes.

MYSTERY MAD LIBS STORY
Want a brain teaser fun mystery comprehension passage that stretches your grades 5-8 students' inference making skills while also reviewing grammar and vocabulary? This write and solve Mad Libs and mystery story fusion even gives public speaking practice if you ask your students to share their hilarious writing in small groups- and they will beg to! Students love writing c-r-a-z-y Mad Libs, and they love solving mysteries; write and solve mysteries are an unbeatable combo of the two. Students add 24 words to the mystery story, then become whodunit detectives, hunting for clues to break characters' alibis and reveal the solution to The Mystery of the Broken 1._______________.

Steps

1. After quickly reviewing the included grammar review sheet if necessary,

students write the Mad Libs mystery, inserting grammatically appropriate words into two pages of grids. They transfer the words to the blanks in the story. Urge them to avoid looking at the story first. If they do, they will write words that always fit the blanks; that spoils the fun!

2. Students read their stories to a partner or to a small group.

3. Students re-read the alibis of the three suspects in their pair or group to identify the culprit. Students also have to explain the clue they to break the alibi and solve the mystery. Even though the broken item will differ with every writer, the culprit’s alibi remains the same.

4. Students learn the solution. The answers are on the riddles answer page.

5. Students color in the coloring borders and solve the fast finishers riddles.

Plot

A dad, Mr James Pond, is upset at a household breakage; his much loved 1._____________ lies in pieces on the floor! Each of your students will probably select a different noun. The only guideline writers are given is that the object they pick has to be breakable. There are 4 suspects: his three children and one of their friends, Ella Funt. Only careful reading of their alibis will allow your students to work out who the culprit is!

If your students enjoyed these brain teaser stories, try the first in the series:

Mini Mysteries grades 5-8 or this long, single mystery: Brain teaser mystery fun inferential skills practice
OR select a bundle of ELA Games and mini-mysteries: Brain Teaser Bundle grades 5-8

For readers' theater summer fun: READERS' THEATER- MYSTERY OF THE DRAMA CAMP THIEF
For a daily brainteaser to add zing! to the start of each class NEXT YEAR: BRAINTEASER BELL RINGERS: MYSTERY STORIES, RIDDLES AND PUZZLES FOR MIDDLE SCHOOL

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