ST PATRICK'S DAY BRAIN TEASER ACTIVITIES - grades 4 5 6 7 fun!

Give your students the most fun they have ever had on St Patrick's Day! This brain teaser activities MINI bundle (how appropriate- the leprechauns would approve!) will furnish your grades 4-7 students with so many green chuckles that they won't know that they are learning!

ST Patrick's Day Brain Teaser Story, Puzzles, and Fun Writing Activities

This NO PREP fun resource is intended to keep students happy and busy on St Patrick's Day, while still exercising their brain cells. The brainteaser story, and writing activities will provoke chuckles and co-operative learning.

The easiest way to use most of the activities, like the story and writing races, is to show them on your screen. If you don’t have the ability to project in your classroom you could either photocopy the resource (and have students work in pairs to reduce the amount of copying required) or put the resource on a password protected homework site. The writing races could be completed on scraps of paper from the recycling bin. In a 1:1 classroom students could race on their device. OR, you could use the ready-to-go Easel Activity that is included in the purchase of this resource.

The Internet is not required for any of the games. If you want to mark the longest activity (the dice roll story) a simple rubric is included.

Table of contents Teacher Guidelines

Brainteaser story

Brainteaser story answer

St Patrick’s Day jokes activity

St Patrick’s dice roll story

St Patrick’s scrambled words

Silly book titles
6 word stories
Writing race #1

Writing race #2

Writing race #3

Writing race #4

Teacher rubric for the dice roll story

St Patrick's Day Brain Teaser Riddles Activity

This St Patrick's Day riddles activity is a fun team game that uses the rules of charades, but is a hilarious mixture of acting and drawing. Some students will pick a card that tells them to act out the answer of their riddle to their team. Some will pick a card that tells them to draw the answer. Some lucky students will select a card that allows them to choose whether to act or draw!

This is how it works

1. A student goes to the front of the room and takes a card from the top of the face-down stack on a desk. They read out the riddle on their card. They can repeat it ONCE if asked.

2. They act or draw the answer, depending on what the card instructs them to do. They have 30 seconds. Sounds can be made, but neither actors nor artists can use words.

3. The other students in their team have 3 tries to guess the answer.

4. If the team doesn’t get it right, then it goes over to the other team who has one guess. The other team can only take 15 seconds.

5. If any of the team members get the right answer, the team does a high-5.

SET UP

Cut up the 30 cards or ask a keen student to do so. If you can laminate them, they will last for many St Patrick's Days.

START UP

Divide the class into two teams facing each other. Shuffle the cards and put them face down on a desk at the front of the room. Select a confident student to go first.

DIFFERENTIATION

If you have several struggling students in your class you can change the usual charades rules for the class and give all the students their card in advance so they can plan how they are going to act or draw the answer. Students need to be cautioned not to show their card or talk about it. If you have a class that does not work well under pressure, you could increase the performance time to one minute so that guessing the riddles solution becomes a more leisurely process.

ST PATRICK'S DAY READERS' THEATER MYSTERY
This Readers’ Theater brain teaser mystery script will give grades 4-7 students practice in reading fluency, comprehension and writing, while having lots of green fun. The St Patrick’s Day Mystery script will entertain your students and require them to perform inference work to discover the basketball thief. The cast list 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. PLOT
This funny and engaging story is about the theft of a basketball at school on March 17. It isn’t just any old basketball, though: it was signed by a Boston Celtics All Star. The owner, Shaun, a short boy with a big heart, is devastated. Despite his small stature, he is a devoted basketball fan; he must get that ball back! Luckily, his ELA and drama teacher, Ms Green, is a determined woman too. His friend, Alec Tricity (a real bright spark!), eventually plays Shamrock Holmes and hunts it down.
STUDENT TASKS

-- Students read aloud their individual part.
-- Students discuss then solve the mystery

-- After reading the script your students have two writing tasks to perform, one of them being to write a ‘missing scene.’
-- Also included is a challenging St Patrick’s Day word search.

LIST OF CONTENTS

Cast list -- page 1

Script pages -- 2-9

Writing tasks pages -- 10-11

Word search -- page 12

Answers to mystery & word search -- page 13

If your students enjoyed the Reader's Theater script, I have plenty more in my store.
Try a scary mystery script: READERS' THEATER SCARY MYSTERY or the second script in the scary mystery series:

READERS THEATER SCARY MYSTERY SCRIPT: A STORMY MYSTERY + QUESTIONS.

For a whole bundle of brain teasing fun: BRAINTEASER STORIES, RIDDLES AND PUZZLES FOR GRADES 5-8 BUNDLE
Thinking about the End of Year yet? Three weeks of fun await here:

END OF YEAR MIDDLE SCHOOL ELA BUNDLE: 3 WEEKS OF FUN!

Thanks so much for checking out this resource. If you click HERE to become a follower, I will update you with new resources as I create them. All new resources are 50% off for 48 hours: receiving follower notifications of new products leads to big savings!