By Lorraine Connell and Katie Gadwah
There is a lot of excitement surrounding escape rooms with new ones popping up in every community - and why not? They are loads of fun!
Lorraine Connell, JSRHS Science teacher, decided that she could harness that excitement and motivate her students by bringing the escape room concept to her Chemistry classes. The conversations began and soon Librarian Katie Gadwah, and Equity teachers Christina Sullivan and Justin Connell were all on board to brainstorm, share time, ideas, and to help make this happen. There are a lot of pre-made boxes to buy, but Mrs. Connell found none that would suit the direct content of her classes. With a little creativity and collaboration, the box for her Chemistry class was conceived. Each lock combination can only be discovered by finding the answer to an inquiry-based Chemistry related problem. Students need to use clues and Chemistry knowledge to unlock all of the locks to solve the puzzle.
First was a dry run with the Science department teachers (above). Like a good dress rehearsal, a lot of glitches were discovered that needed to be worked out. And seeing all of this problem solving in action, many other students were exposed to the excitement and have checked in to see if they could participate - we anticipate a lot more classes integrating these activities in the future as the excitement grows.
Now the boxes are ready to go for students. Who can figure out what happened to Mendeleev’s periodic chart? The breakout box has an element of competition, because students only have one class period to ‘break out’. Can they solve the mystery in one class period? We will find out on November 22nd!
We are so lucky to have the most enthusiastic and creative teachers at John Stark Regional High School.
