Teaching Conceptual Development Through Riddle

by John R. Walkup, Ph.D.


Riddle Me This! is a popular game where audience members are asked to uncover the identity of an object by reading (or hearing) a few lines of a cryptic message.

For example:

Riddle: I am weightless, but you can see me. Put me in a bucket, and I'll make it lighter. What am I? 

Answer: A hole

Ace rigor author Barbara Blackburn showed us at the Arizona ASCD conference how teachers can employ riddle into instruction by asking students to create riddles directly related to content they learned previously in class.

Essentially, most of the learning takes place when students create their riddles, although participants must review what they have learned previously to answer the riddle.

Impact on Rigor

The Knowledge Domain of Bloom's Revised Taxonomy comprises a number of essential elements of knowledge. One of these elements refers to conceptual knowledge.

Concepts are general ideas that share common characteristics. For example, biologists have well-defined criteria for what constitutes an apple (e.g., all apples are fruit). However, the attribute "red" is not shared by all apples, so we would say that color is not a critical attribute of apples.

Conceptual development, therefore consists of separating critical from non-critical attributes, then teaching those critical attributes. If an art teacher wanted to use direct instruction to teach the concept contour, she could

(a) define contour for her students in terms of all of its critical attributes,
(b) elaborate on the definition,
(c) show sculptures that demonstrate attention to contour, and
(d) distinguish contour from other principles of design (e.g. balance).

Riddle

Although not well-suited for teaching new concepts, riddles offer an effective means of reviewing previously learned concepts.

To create a riddle, the riddler must write down a number of statements that point directly toward the answer. Each of the individual statements alone doesn't provide enough information to solve the riddle, just like a concept is not defined by just one critical attribute.

A typical (albeit dull) example:

I am four-sided.
My interior angles are all right angles.
What am I?

Any statements that reflect non-critical attributes will mislead the listener. Therefore, asking students to create riddles compels them to reflect on the critical and non-critical attributes of an idea. For example, a riddle like the following will not work if the answer is "rectangle":

I have four sides of equal length.
My interior angles are all right angles.
What am I?

Having sides of equal length is not a critical attribute of rectangles, since only a special case of rectangles (i.e, squares), have all four sides of equal length.

Well-formed riddles also compel students to take into account the entirety of a definition. For example, the following riddle will not suffice if the answer is "rectangle."

I am four-sided.
What am I?

Summary

The examples used above were simplified to highlight the relationship between riddling and conceptual development. Students tend to produce somewhat more creative examples when given sufficient time.

So, try incorporating riddle into your next lesson plan as a review of previous lessons and see how it goes. And, if it doesn't come off as planned, eh... you at least tried it out.

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Seeking training at your school or district centered on Cognitive Rigor or Depth of Knowledge?  Call me at (559) 903-4014 or email me at jwalkup@standardsco.com. 

We will discuss ways in which I can help your teachers boost student engagement and deep thinking in their classrooms. I offer workshops, follow-up classroom observation/coaching, and curriculum analysis to anywhere in the country (and even internationally).