Mystery of the Iced Tea Bell Ringer

Here’s a quick bell ringer/brain teaser you can open up class with since it’s still 80* in October. 

Prior to introducing the riddle, work in some PQA with the following questions:

  • “Do you drink iced tea?”
  • “Does anyone else in your family drink it?”
  • “Do you drink iced tea only when it’s hot out or year round?
  • “Do you like lemon in your iced tea?”
  • “Do you drink sweet tea or unsweetened tea?”
  • “If you don’t like to drink tea when it’s hot, what do you drink instead?”

In just this quick warm-up, we get reps on all of the following:

  • months and seasons
  • names of places
  • family vocabulary
  • structures such as “instead of” or “in place of”
  • “with” or “without”

El Misterio del Té Helado – Microsoft PowerPoint

More Posts

¡Corre! El Encierro de San Fermín (The Running of the Bulls)

What language teacher doesn’t love a good Rick Steves video of the Running of the Bulls?  This is a good activity if you need to take a break from providing the input for about 20 minutes and want to cover one of the more intriguing cultural spectaculars of Spain at

Day of the Dead/Halloween Comparison Activity

Here’s a simple Venn diagram activity you can go through with your students to compare Day of the Dead and Halloween.  My Spanish 1 students do fine with this exact language this far into their first semester, but I uploaded it as a Word document so you’re able to edit

Easter Peeps Mafia

Spring break is three days away. When you’re done with the game, you can have a class debate about whether Peeps actually taste good. For me, it depends on the flavor. Traditional? No thanks. Dr. Pepper Peeps? In the parlance of my students, they are “straight fire.” I hope you