Escape Rooms Being Used to Learn Science
It wasn’t that long ago that escape rooms began to take the country by storm; people can’t seem to get enough of the activity! Escape rooms are games in which a group of players work together to discover clues, solve puzzles, and accomplish tasks within a confined room in order to escape that room in a set amount of time. Principal Josh Ischy describes escape rooms as “critical thinking and enjoyable outlets to learn and review science material.”
Miss Schaub was first presented with the idea to combine science curricula with escape room games when she attended a professional development training last year. Earlier this school year, she created escape room activities that involved Punnett Squares, which are tools used in biology to predict the probability of an offspring having a certain genotype, along with other topics. So far, the escape rooms have proven beneficial, engaging the students in applying the information they have been studying.
Currently, she is creating an escape room focused on the principles of weather and climate. In this escape room, students will have to complete tasks and puzzles that utilize their knowledge of isobars, which aid in reading atmospheric pressure, their ability to read and use weather maps, forecasts, and the vocabulary the students are otherwise studying. They will also be required to use typical weather-related instruments to solve these problems – all things they have been studying in class with Miss Schaub.
In order to fund this project, Miss Schaub turned to “Donors Choose Project.” According to the website, Donors Choose Project aims to make it easy for anyone to help a classroom in need. Miss Schaub used Donors Choose Project to get word-combination locks and number-combination locks to be used in the rooms.
