Anyway, I've been seeing all of these fantastic, yet slightly scary "escape rooms" popping up all over Instagram. Don't get me wrong, I love a challenge, but the thought of being locked in ANYWHERE (unless it's The Great American Cookie Co. or Nordstrom) sends me into a tizzy. However, I thought - who are the bravest/craziest people I know? My students.
I tried to create a mini escape room to use for a EOC review that wasn't too scary or too difficult, but still intrigued them and pushed them to work as a team. I was happily surprised to discover that I could make an escape room plan for very little money!
Here are my supplies + links to purchase.
1. Walkie Talkies (not necessary, but definitely added to the fun.)
2. Invisible Ink Pen
3. Mini black light flashlights
4. Mini safe (Although, you could also use your own box + locks from The Dollar Store - I checked and they have 3 different kinds of locks available at my local store!)
5. Candy
6. Envelopes
7. Taboo Game (Here's a link to the one I created in two different places): or part of my entire EOC Bundle found HERE
8. 3 Bottles of Coke (or your beverage of choice):
9. EOC practice books: My school has 25 copies of this book. It's a pretty accurate reflection of the REAL EOC.
10. Printed supplies (crack the code sheet, poem + question), and my bestie also let me borrow some mini whiteboards to use!
When students entered the room, their desks looked like this:
Then, they read this message on the board.
*Side note, my sweet bestie (who just happens to teach next door to me), was SUCH a good sport. She kept a walkie talkie with her all day and pretended to be the Power School Bandit! She would randomly radio my students and encourage them to use specific testing strategies. She also did an evil laugh every 5 minutes with some "motivation" in the form of "I'M IN THE GRADE BOOK NOW". It was great and the students LOVED IT. Here's a sneaky screenshot of what popped up on my screen at one point:
I gave a brief overview and tried to really play into it. I told them that I couldn't even take attendance because my PowerSchool password had been changed. They are great sports, so they were excited to play along. I then showed them the first challenge:
Cracking the code led them to a "vault" that was filled with a treasure for the first group to finish + the next clue. This exercise took them about 15-20 min. to complete. It was harder than they thought it would be! Here's the vault once they figured out the secret code + opened it!
The clue revealed the following message:
Exercise #2 brought students to this challenge:
This is where things got interesting! It should have been easy to only write one sentence per group, but things got a little crazy. First, they couldn't agree on the answer. Then, they couldn't agree on which group should write what sentence! I just sat back and watched the leaders emerge. In the end, all three of my classes wrote the response with only seconds to spare! Here they are avoiding CR "bombs"! haha!
Once they finished this exercised they all received candy and viewed the next clue.
This clue showed them a flashlight, which revealed the invisible ink from clue 1! This note told them to check under the desks for a hidden envelope!
WHY DO CHILDREN ALWAYS STICK GUM UNDER DESKS! EW!
Once they opened the envelope, they had to solve a riddle!
They found their final clue here!
They played literary "Taboo" by having their desk mates guess literary elements without saying "taboo" words. Here's an example!
When they finished, they had to use the walkie talkie to radio the "Power School Bandit" and get the password to change their grades back to normal!
In the end, they all completed the tasks before the bell rang and received this message:
It was SO much fun and I didn't have anyone rain on my escape room parade! Hopefully the fun review distracted them a bit from the big scary EOC monster that's looming in the distance. Fingers crossed!
