Escape Room Madness

Can you escape the grasp of 207's escape room? Who knows?
Usually we would've done a haunted house or a halloween poem presentation, but since Tiiu had done a haunted house for 10 years straight, we decided to do an escape room instead. Now this really all started with Shauna Pollock, a former teacher of Churchill. Tiiu had been telling us a story about how she and Shauna had gone to an escape room a little while back. She told us that she had a fantastic idea to do an escape room instead of a haunted house. Oh boy, it really was a fantastic idea, no doubt about it.
The first step we needed to take was to figure out what the challenges were going to be. That order of business was hard! Before we began, Tiiu set up some challenges for us to try. Then we brainstormed and came up with what we were going to use. We used some ideas from those first challenges and also came up with some new ones.


Here are some of the ideas we used:

• a math tile puzzle game (Marcy Cooke tiles)
• a clock that had hands pointing at lock combination numbers
• we had students find numbers stuck to bricks of Legos in big bins for another lock combination
• a page with holes in it that, when placed over a page in a book showed a word clue

We spent almost one entire day building props and preparing. We made different teams that did different jobs.
After that we made some changes, experimented our escape room on people, and did some more brainstorming. We also tweeted with a local escape room that gave us some advice.
Finally the escape room was finished!
The story behind it was that you were with your class on a field trip in a museum when you wandered away from your class. Then the museum closed for the night and you were still in the museum and had to get out. We created five different museum exhibits (a museum of nature, an art gallery, a museum of ancient civilizations, and a science museum). Each exhibit had the exact same series of problems. This meant that classes could all come down together but small groups of 4-5 students could work on the problems. The escape room basically had all the puzzles in it, some museum artifact decorations, and some pretty funny "portraits" that people stuck their heads in so they could give clues. One team of people wrote a series of clues that rhymed. Each room also had someone from our class that acted as a tour guide. The tour guides helped point people in the right direction and helped to open locks.
I think our class liked the end product and the process because being able to say that you made an actual escape room is pretty cool and it's also really fun when the students are actually doing something you created. It's really interesting to watch how the students figure it out and then say "YESSS" at the end. I think that this was a really difficult project that we had on our hands but we made an awesome end product. The only thing that we will probably change next time is starting earlier but apart from that, nothing. I think that the escape room was a big hit! I can't wait to do it next year.                                                                          

This page turner took our guests further down their escape route.

Before the chaos

During the chaos

Chaos continues

Albert Einstein read out clues in the Science and Technology museum exhibit.

A guest trying to solve the clues.

Trying to solve clues

Do these clues all add up?

The numbers that the clock is pointing to will lead the way!

The Staff!

2015 Let's Get it Started!

This is the dawn of a new school year, and we'd like to get it started with a summary of what's been goin' on!  Before the election we took part in something called the student election, where schools all over the country sign up and  participate. Three classes participated in our school. Then we took about a week and researched who we wanted to vote for. One week later we set up a voting station on our third floor, and through out the day, we went up in pairs to vote! the Liberals and NDP's tied, and we were all hoping that it would result the same in the real world.

  Then when Liberals won, we took a class field trip to the swearing in ceremony of Justin Trudeau (which was amazing),  then we were inspired to make our own government. Tiiu is now Prime Minister of our class and we are now our own cabinet ministers! We have Ministers of Environment, Ministers of Social Media, a Minister of Horticultural Arts, Minister of Rodent Affairs, and loads more! Each and every minister has it's own job and responsibilities, like feeding guinea pigs, filing work, reminding Tiiu of birthdays, bringing up the lunch food, writing blog posts, and finding good activities to do with the class.Minister of Forms says: I think the Ministry jobs are good because our room is more organized and everybody likes their jobs. I love my job. I collect the forms that come in like for field trips. I check people off lists. I think it's helping me to talk to everybody because I was only talking to my friends before. The class finds it fun because we got to pick our jobs. We feel like we have our own duties to do every day. We are taking responsibility and initiative as we take ownership over our departments. It's also a benefit to Tiiu, because she has more time freed up to do other things. Secretary to the Prime Minister says: I think the jobs are a good idea. I have to do things that the Prime Minister asks me to do. I wanted this job because I like it when someone is telling me to do stuff instead of having to figure it out on my own. I also get to do different things instead of the same thing everyday.
We're loving our new jobs. This is a great start to a new year and we're looking forward to more!
 207 Cabinet Minsters
Canada's Cabinet Ministers

Minister of Forms says: I think the Ministry jobs are good because our room is more organized and everybody likes their jobs. I love my job. I collect the forms that come in like for field trips. I check people off lists. I think it's helping me to talk to everybody because I was only talking to my friends before.
Secretary to the Prime Minister says: I think the jobs are a good idea. I have to do things that the Prime Minister asks me to do. I wanted this job because I like it when someone is telling me to do stuff instead of having to figure it out on my own. I also get to do different things instead of the same thing everyday.

Wondering

Please start by filling out the "How do you feel today?" form.
Today I would like you to explore these links to Wonderopolis questions that match the Science units we are investigating right now.

In the comments section, write a summary of one of the questions. Please remember to sign your name and answer with full sentences that start with capitals and end with proper punctuation.

Grade Four Questions
Solar Lights
Music and Mood
Changing Colour
Vision Impairment and Technology
Night Vision

Grade Five Questions
Crackling Wood
Helium and Voice
Plasma Ball
Beginning of Earth
Diamonds
Quicksand
Matter
Hot Foggy Water

Geometry, Light, and Sound

We are looking at geometry in math with a focus on what properties shapes have and how we can use those properties to describe, compare, and understand shapes. We started with an activity to see what we already know about quadrilaterals and triangles. It seems we know a lot about sides but need to learn some more about the angles. We also need to learn more about the specific kinds of triangles (grade 5) and quadrilaterals (grade 4).

Today we looked at some of the benchmark angles and took a look around our room for examples. In looking, we noticed that there are a lot of right angles in our room because our room is full of squares and rectangles. That got us thinking: if the triangle is such a strong shape, why do we have so many squares and rectangles in our building? Well, I asked a carpenter that happened to be in our room after school and I've got some data that we can talk about tomorrow.

Sorry for the orientation of these pictures! Bonus question: how many degrees would I have to turn these pictures to get them to face the right way?

What is happening in these pictures? Only the grade 4s will know. Ask them and see what they say!

One Word

To help us stay focused for the rest of this year, we are going to be picking "One Word".

To help us find this word, we spent some time today slowing down and looking in 360 degrees around our brain, instead of shooting up our ladder of inference and rushing at finding a word.

Here are some of the mental maps we created when we thought about what dreams we have for the year 2015.

Next, we are going to take a step back from our maps and find a word that will help us focus on these goals. Stay tuned!

Ladder of Inference

Yesterday, we learned about our "Ladders of Inference". This was a tricky video so we watched it a few times and asked a lot of questions.
We are learning about our "Ladders of Inference" to help us understand some of the things that happen in our brains on a daily basis. We are going to use this information as we learn about new things and open our minds up to more questions.

After watching the video a few times and discussing it, students were challenged to write a thirty word summary. They are then going to work in a group to try and collaborate on one "super" answer from all of their combined work.

No matter what I tried, these just did not want to turn around for me. Sorry!

Pair Share

We are going to be reading independently and then sharing about what we've read with a partner. We are doing this so that we can practice checking in for understanding and practice speaking and listening to others about things that we are thinking about.

You'll know you have this if you are staying on task and completing all of the steps. You'll also know you have it if you are listening to your partner and can understand and repeat what they've talked to you about.

This should also help you to dig deeper into your reading.

When we do this, you will read for 10-20 minutes. Then, you will get together with your partner and do all three of these things:

1. Summarize what you read during their independent reading time.
2. Read a page aloud to your partner.
3. Answer the posted comprehension question.

When we finish, we will get together as a group and a few of you will:

1. Summarize what your PARTNER read to you that day.
2. Explain how your PARTNER answered the comprehension question.