Puzzle Story Leading to a Values Clarification

Mario Rinvolucri, UK

I guess a lot of you know this “puzzle story”

A man looked up round two corners and saw something that made him want to go down.

You pop this sentence on the board and suggest to the students that they can find out more about the odd situation by asking you YES/NO questions.

By the way the solution goes like this: the man is a submarine captain who sees an enemy destroyer through his periscope ( up round two corners)

You will find some 30 or 40 of these mystery stories in my book Challenge to Think and floating around the Internet.

But you don’t need “puzzle” stories. Take any short, pithy good narrative that your students have not seen and, extract from it three semi-keywords, put these on the board and ask the students to find what the story is about by asking you YES/NO questions.

Here is a good example of such material:

Keywords

camper van       theft       improvements

Story

Mr. Singh bought a camper van from a dealer for £8000. He modernized the van to the tune of £8000. Two years later the police called on him and informed him that the camper van had been stolen just before he bought it from the dealer. They ordered Mr. Singh to return it to its previous owner.

JUST or UNJUST?

Once the students have guessed the story group them in sixes and ask them to react to the moral implications of the story.

Round off with a general values clarification, whole class discussion.

Note

Question and answer puzzle stories began to be used in the 70’s of the last century. The 1980’s were the heyday of values clarification work, especially in the US.

Please check the Creative Methodology for the Classroom course at Pilgrims website.