Muddles

Level: Intermediate and Advanced.

Skills: writing and speaking.

Topic: vocabulary.

Materials: pencil and paper.

Time: 10 minutes.

The students are provided with pencil and paper. Each student selects the name of some animal, fish, or bird, and mixes the letters so as to spell other words. For instance, if one chooses elephant, the words might be "pent heal"; if monkey, "no key m"," while gorilla may be "lag roil".

Allow some minutes for the students make the "muddle". No letter can be used twice, and words must be formed. Then clap your hands and each student in turn reads his "muddle" to the rest of the class, who guess what his chosen word is.

Each puzzle is carefully timed. The one whose puzzle takes longest to guess is the winner; therefore, each person must mix the letters as much as possible.

Sides may be chosen if preferred, with students taking turn alternately, and the side which has taken the least time to guess the puzzles is the victorious side.

You can substitute animal names for food names, nationalities, clothes, personality adjectives, etc. I have tried with all those vocabulary categories, with teenage and adult classes, and it definitely works!