My students need a toolbox, several combination and keyed locks, blacklights, and other puzzle-hunt accessories to practice breakout games and equip our final escape room.
My students are learning that math thinking does not mean carrying out static procedures to solve highly stereotyped problems. For us, it means being creative and courageous in the face of complexity. It means persevering when you're wrong so you can celebrate the hard work it took to be right.
I teach at a public charter school in rural Durango, CO, where in the mountains my students' dreams have limitless potential.
Through an innovative and rigorous project-based curriculum, my school strives to empower students to be deep thinkers and engaged citizens who have the skills, empathy, and passion necessary to enact great change in our local and global communities. Every day, my students shift the paradigm of public education through critical reflection and intellectual curiosity, and a day at my school is a day of constant exploration and renewed understanding.
My Project
My students need a toolbox, several combination and keyed locks, blacklights, and other puzzle-hunt accessories to practice breakout games and equip our final escape room. For our interdisciplinary biology project this semester, my geometry students are creating an escape room, which is a live adventure game in which participants are locked into a room and have to find clues and solve puzzles in order to obtain the key to get out. In their investigation of polyhedra, anatomy, and biotensegrity--or the role that geometry plays in muscular support of the skeletal system--my students will create an experience that transforms their learning into the context of a puzzle -hunt. The materials for this project will enable my students to apply what they've learned in their biology and geometry classes to create puzzles and design and practice breakout games and elaborate puzzle-hunts in preparation for our final escape room.
In their effort to create an escape room experience that fosters critical and creative thinking, teamwork, and problem solving, my students will develop and nurture those skills themselves.
Traditional mathematics education perpetuates the idea that math is dry, formulaic, and disengaging, and like other endeavors of project-based learning, the escape room has the potential to turn math learning into a fun, engaging experience that contextualizes math in the real world.
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