Love the idea of an ELA escape room for a fun Halloween activity? Use this process to DIY it or check out the two we already made for you!
Escape rooms are quite popular as entertainment venues. Families and friends now spend an evening trying to escape one single room rather than attend a movie or eat out at a restaurant, which shows how fun escape rooms can be!
A classroom digital escape room can ALSO be super fun! It uses technology to steer the students through different problems and/or scenarios in order to solve a puzzle. Just like an entertainment escape room, the goal is to solve one problem, which leads to the next problem, and so on…with the ultimate goal of “escaping” the challenge.
In the typical classroom, “escaping” may mean unlocking a lock to a treat box, deciphering a code that earns free time, or simply solving a mystery phrase for bragging rights.
To make your own, you can use digital technology or a simple paper/pencil method. Either way, the students are learning while having fun!
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HOW TO MAKE A SIMPLE HALLOWEEN ESCAPE ROOM
An escape room typically comprises of two or more puzzles. Here are three easy puzzle ideas for ELA:
PUZZLE IDEAS:
1. Order and Sequence
Write a fun spooky text and break it up into five or more different paragraphs or sections. Place a letter to an answer code in each paragraph “box”. Then mix the paragraphs up so they are out of order. The task behind this puzzle is for students to put the story back in order. Once they do, they will have their code!
The example below used the first letter of the paragraph as the code letter. So, the code letter for this paragraph is “A”. Pretty cool, huh?
2. Multiple Choice Questions
Students will read a passage and answer multiple choice questions about the Halloween holiday. The corresponding letters to the right answers make up the code answer for this puzzle.
For example, if the student answers “C” for this question, then “C” will be one of the code letters.
3. Decoding Activity
Create a decoder, that attaches a symbol to each letter of the alphabet.
Then make a Halloween riddle (think of your typical Halloween trick that kids ask before receiving their treats) and an answer space where each letter is missing. Replace each missing letter with symbols from the decoder. Put squares around five sybols which will be the final code of the puzzle.
Students use the decoder to locate the missing letters. Once they solve the riddle, they collect the boxed letters and identify the code!
ESCAPING THE ROOM:
In order to fully escape the room, students must solve each of the puzzles involved. Students can simply retrieve the codes to each of the puzzles to escape or If you want to get super creative, you can have each puzzle aligned so that the answer to the first puzzle helps students answer the second puzzle.
For example, maybe the code to the “Order and Sequence” Puzzle includes letters in a decoder that correspond with specific symbols. Then, those symbols allow students to locate specific vocabulary words in a second puzzle. Students must then define each of those vocabulary words correctly to identify a second code, and so on and so forth!
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The possibilities are endless!
DIGITIZING YOUR HALLOWEEN ESCAPE ROOM:
There are a lot of ways to digitize these puzzles and we recommend finding tutorials for this process online. We typically use Google Slides here at The Sparkly Notebook. The key is to make each puzzle the “background” of an individual slide so students can’t move the “worksheet” around. Add text boxes where you want students to answer questions. If you want students to put items in an order, make each item its own image so students can move them around as necessary.
DON’T HAVE TIME TO MAKE YOUR HALLOWEEN ESCAPE ROOM?
No problem! The Sparkly Notebook has lots of done-for-you escape rooms already ready to go! Here are two no-prep options for the upcoming Halloween holiday!
Halloween Figurative Language Digital Escape Room
Halloween Reading Comprehension Digital Escape Room
Enjoy!
Check out this blog for more Halloween fun in The Sparkly Notebook!