Have you ever seen “How to Bartle Puzballs?” It’s an exercise in the first chapter of Kelly Gallagher’s book Deeper Reading and an illustration of superficial reading, It proves that you can read nonsense and still answer basic questions without comprehending a text at all. I loved sharing it with my 8th-grade ELA students at the beginning of the year to introduce the idea of deeper reading (read more here).
“How to Bartle Puzballs” is one of the inspirations behind this group challenge, and the idea of a team problem was inspired by those found in Get it Together and United We Solve.
Working in groups of 3 or 4, students work to identify alien beings from Planet Pikkel using clues with nonsensical words. They must work together to figure out what the nonsense words mean, then use their translation of the clues to identify the creatures correctly.
Solving the puzzle requires logical thinking and critical reading skills, and because it’s a team challenge, it also calls for cooperation. On its own, and even as an independent activity, it can be an engaging brain stretch. But, of course, why waste a puzzle when there are meaningful connections to be made?
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NEOLOGISMS and PSEUDOWORDS
Pseudwords, or nonsense words, are sometimes adopted into our common language and added to the dictionary as “new words” or neologisms. Because the puzzle includes nonsense language, this is an obvious connection.
This would be a great time to share my WORLD OF WORDS virtual museum. You can also find it the original post HERE. Shown below is ROOM ONE in the virtual museum.
For many years, I loved reading the poem Jabberwocky with my 3rd graders, and we tried to figure out what the nonsense words might mean. I had students first underline words they didn’t know, then highlight them according to the parts of speech (see below). Ian Byrd has a great lesson on Byrdseed TV, and you can read more about it in his post Jabberwocky, Parts of Speech, and Context Clues.
I hope you enjoy sharing the puzzle with your students. I have many novel puzzles in my TPT store as well, and you can find a list of puzzles and tutorials HERE.
Related Articles and Resources:
Two Puzzles are Better Than One: Customize Puzzles for Learning
Two Puzzles are Better Than One ~ Part 2
Pun and Games, Mathematical Poetry, and Creativity with Words
How do I access the answer keys?
Hi Katherine. You can request the answer keys using the message/request link on the WELCOME page.