Hotel Guests (Lesson Plan)

Two successful lesson in one week? My life is amazing. This one I’ve done so far with 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th graders, and although some classes got the concept better than others, the actual English was neither too easy nor too hard for any of them. I plan on doing it with every single class this week except for the 4th graders, the worst 5th graders, and the 8th grade class I mentioned in the previous entry.

So Hotel Guests is a logic puzzle. Students work in pairs and get two lists of clues, and using these they have to fill out a chart with who is staying in the hotel, what room they’re in, what city they’re from, and what their jobs are. This took 45 minutes for most of them, including going over the answers at the end.

Student A’s clues:
- The man in room 104 is an architect.
- Mr Carter is a librarian.
- The nurse comes from Leeds.
- The woman who comes from Brighton is in the room directly opposite Ms Smith.
- Ms Brown is a web designer.
- Both Mr Jones and Mr Watson have rooms next to the left.
- The woman in room 106 comes from Brighton.
- The architect is from Belfast.
- The man between Mr Jones and Ms Webber is called French.
- Ms Webber is a journalist.
- The man from Cardiff is in the room opposite Mr Watson.

Student B’s clues:
- The man in room 102 comes from Cardiff.
- Mr Watson is an engineer.
- The web designer is in the room between the teacher and Mr Watson.
- Ms Webber lives in Brighton.
- The woman in room 109 is called North.
- The architect is directly opposite the web designer.
- The man from Birmingham is in the room next to Ms Brown.
- Ms North comes from Leeds.
- Mr Jones is a dentist.
- Ms North is in the room next to the woman from Cambridge.
- The man in the room nearest the drink machine comes from London.

And, you need the map:
And you need this one extra clue, because for some reason they just forgot to tell you that Ms Brown is from Dundee, and a couple of my students got really pissed about not being able to finish. Anyway, the answers:

room, name, home city, job
102, Mr Jones, Cardiff, dentist
103, Mr Watson, Birmingham, engineer
104, Ms French, Belfast, architect
105, Ms Brown, Dundee, web designer
106, Ms Webber, Brighton, journalist
107, Ms Smith, Cambridge, teacher
108, Mr Carter, London, librarian
109, Ms North, Leeds, nurse

And the last things I’ll say: watch out, the kids’ll think “Belfast” is hilarious. Points to the first person who gets why.