bombs in bottles
Today, we devoted the last two hours to a "reward day" for students who had zero tardies or unexcused absences the previous marking period (and study hall for those who did not). I created an escape room in the library. The kids cracked it with only eight minutes to spare. I call this a success.
I'll be reworking all the clues for next marking period's escape room, so I don't feel too bad about revealing the whole thing here. Besides, if one of my students manages to find this post, they're a better sleuth than I expected and I commend them. Stop by the library and show this post to me, and I'll give you some candy.
Actually locking the kids in the library was a fire code violation, so I settled for locking a file cabinet drawer full of treats. The key went on a combination lock, which was attached to the leg of one of the library tables. Three different clue "strings" each led to one of the three numbers in the combination.
The first string began with a fake student schedule, a bunch of Scrabble tiles, and a tennis ball. Decoded, they spelled "DRAMA WILSON," the call number of August Wilson's THE PIANO LESSON. This led to the library piano, in which I stuck the sheet music to "I Saw Three Ships," with the note "practice all three parts by March 3rd!"
The second string began with puzzle pieces scattered around the library. Assembled, they revealed themselves to be a page of an English-Italian dictionary. At that page in said dictionary was an Uno card. Inside the Uno box were several cards rubber-banded together with a note that said "COUNT ME." They added up to 25.
The third string started with old library cards stuck in various books on the displays, each of which was turned backwards, upside-down, or sideways. Once assembled, one could note highlighted letters on each card. Match the highlighter colors and decode; the cards spelled "PUT YOUR FEET UP." Taped to the bottom of one of the ottomans was a note reading "Which page will tell you what 'affluent' means?" The answer was the unabridged dictionary, which had that particular word on page 38.
The kids struggled the most with the "DRAMA WILSON" call number, which is on me: because I had to build this library from scratch starting with an empty room this year, I haven't had time to (nor been expected to) actually give library lessons. Ergo, my kids have no experience handling call numbers. That will be remedied next year, when I'll actually be able to do the "teacher" part of "teacher librarian."
(No, "DRAMA WILSON" is not a number. I genrefied the non-fiction and will be doing the same to the fiction once the school year ends. I'm happy to rant at length about this, but suffice it to say: I don't need kids to know that poetry is shelved under 811 in Dewey. I need them to experience themselves as people capable of finding the poetry section and reading it, because poetry is awesome.)
The jigsaw puzzle was both too easy and too hard. They found all the pieces almost immediately, but did not catch on that it was a page from a bilingual dictionary until I pointed it out to them - after they'd pulled every other dictionary from the shelves and gotten nowhere. Next time, I'll probably use a page of The Odyssey or Shakespeare that I can reasonably expect even the freshmen to have read.
Finally, the SPED teacher stopped by to tell me that her kids had really wanted to do the escape room, but she feared they'd struggle too hard with the clues. Given that my non-SPED team needed 112 minutes of 120, I think this was a fair assessment. So we'll be getting together to build a version for the SPED class. I'm really excited about that - it'll give me a chance to try building an escape room that incorporates curriculum.
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