Escape Room Activities in Education

This week in class we had a lesson activity created by one of our colleagues based upon grade 12 Advanced Functions.  He focused the lesson primarily on trig identities but the actual way he taught the lesson was one of the most innovative and interactive ways that I have ever witnessed.  The instructor set-up a complete "escape room" activity where we had to solve problems, figure out clues figure out famous mathematicians all to obtain a final key which opened a locked box.  While doing this escape room, I was having so much fun that I forgot I was even doing trigonometry at the same time.  There were so many twists and turns throughout the activity which allowed all the participants to really use their brains and think critically.  Overall, it was a great activity.  The video featured here has great ideas and tips to include in your escape room for your class.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqzczyx5dss

In terms of applying this activity to a unit, it can be seen that it could be used as a culminating activity or used as a study period before a test.  I feel that this should only be used near the end of a unit because you have to apply all the information you would've learned throughout the unit to solve the final riddle.  This is what makes it very useful for a culminating activity as you as the teacher can go around and observe how the students are interact with the problems and working together to achieve the answer.  Moreover, the idea of a "escape room" can be set-up just for fun before a test as it does review major concepts but takes the stress out of having a quiet study period in the classroom.  This may in fact not only help students learn what areas they need to still study but allows them to relax and have fun in the math classroom.  Debriefing the activity is a great way for the teams to reflect on the process, how well they worked together what they would've done differently, what areas did they struggle with, what areas did the do well with?

Finally, what I really think is great about this idea is that it can be applied to almost every subject in a highschool curriculum.  For example, my second teachable is geography and I know I could create a great escape room activity on something like Canada's resources and industries.  This could also be applied to a unit in English if students were studying Shakespeare for example as it can be a creative way for students to brush up on their knowledge.  The website at the bottom has great resources for you to check out and apply the escape room to your activity.

https://www.theescapeclassroom.com/

Grade 9 strategies to use in the classroom

Two weeks ago, we had a presentation for our "teach a lesson" assignment by one of our colleagues in class.  The topic was slope of a line and they created a very interactive game that was designed to engage students while they were learning.  Instead of just practicing boring slope questions from a textbook or assignment, the teacher candidate created a game called battle slopes.  This game was very similar to battle ships but combined the idea of slopes of a line and equations of a line  How this game worked was that each player picked a partner and was given a grid with an x-axis and a y-axis (each grid was hidden from the opposing player).  They then had to place dots which represent different sized boats (there was a 2 dot boat, 3 dot boat, 4 dot 5 dot boat) on the grid wherever they choose.  Next, much like the game of battleships, instead of calling out a co-ordinate like A5, they would call out a random slope of a line.  For example, my first move I called out 2x+3.  My opponent had to then draw that line on their gamecard, if it hit any of the points they placed, then they would declare "hit".  If it didn't hit any points, then my opponent would say "miss".  This would continue until one of us hit all of the battleships. 

    I thought that this was a very interactive game as I had lots of fun playing it but I was still learning at the same time.  Although I know how to plot the slope of the line, it was a good refresher for me and I could really see myself using this in class.  Another thing that the colleague did was have a mathematical discussion about the game after everyone finished.  We essentially all compared our different strategies to one another to see what the ideal method was to "hitting all the ships".  Some people (like myself) just more or less randomly guessed until they hit a point and then moved the y-intercept to hit another point.  Other people started with y=x, then y=x+1, then y=x+2 until they had the entire board covered.  We also discussed whether it was better to call out a steep line or a flat line when playing this game. 

Overall, going into my next block which will be a math teachable I really learned from this colleagues presentation.  I truly feel that they did a great job and this is definitely an interactive game that I could use in my placement near the end of the slope unit.  I feel that this would be great practice for students if they were studying for a quiz or a test or even if they needed clarification on the slope of the line.  Moreover, the mathematical discussion at the end was a great way to get everybody involved and see all the different strategies that one could approach this game.

 

Cup Stacking

This week in class we looked at a cup stacking mathematical question.  We were supposed to determine how many cups tall the teacher is.  This was an extremely open ended question and we first had to figure out what information we would need to start the question.  After careful consideration we found out that we needed to have the teacher's height, the height of one cup and the method of stacking.  We found out that the teacher was about 1.78m, the height of one cup was about 11cm and we had to interlock the cups.  From here there could be a multitude of different ways to go about solving this problem.  If this was in a classroom setting, I would leave this problem completely open to students and tell them to try it using any method.  My first initial thought was to physically stack the cups beside the teacher and try to get a rough estimate but we later found out that there was not enough cups to do this.  Eventually, we figured out that if we determined the height of each lid then we could just continue stacking until we reach 1.78m.  But, this was one only method.  Some students used linear relationships, graphing etc. which all can lead to the final result.
I really believe that these open-ended questions are great because they enhance a student's critical thinking skills.  This can also lead to "mathematical discussions" in the classroom in what we studied earlier in the year.  Students can go up in groups and show how they got their final answer and then can compare and contrast with other students creating a mathematical discussion.  These ideas are not only fun but they provide a rich experience for all students.