This is the last The Week That Was In 505. It will be changing to The Week That Was in 234 as I have changed schools and classrooms.
The New Richmond community has been a part of my life since 2nd grade. It is my alma mater. I’m in their athletic hall of fame for tennis. My parents still live in the community. It is where I have taught the last 12 years. But, it was time for a change. I’m moving onto Batavia Middle School and teaching 8th grade social studies.
What does this mean for all the template links on this site? I don’t know….it depends on how long they keep my account open. I have too many template links, and a messy drive, and it’s next to impossible for me to track down all these links. We will just start fresh with the new school year.
Every year I write a note on my board and walk out. Here is my last note:
Monday – Escape Room, Google Form
Monday
Monday was really the only day of teaching this week. Knowing how middler schoolers can be, I needed something engaging. I used my good buddy Claude AI to help me design an escape room. Claude came up with a series of puzzles and games to help students figure out a clue to unlock the Google Form.
The escape room we designed was related to the content students learned all year – causes of the American Revolution, the Constitution, Westward Expansion, and causes of the Civil War.
Claude did an excellent job coming up with some basic puzzles. For example:
- Students had to put westward expansion events in chronological order for a number lock.
- There was a series of multiple choice questions where the correct answers spelled out the cause of the Civil War that students had to unscramble.
- The Cryptogram was fun, but it wasn’t perfect. Some of the words and letter clues were off.
- One of the clues specific letters from the answers were unscrambl;es and spelled out FEDERALISM.
Overall, Claude did an excellent job coming up with ideas. I put this escape room together in 30 minutes. Claude also helped me come up with rhymes to help students find the next puzzle thgat I hid somehwere ion my classroom.
Ultimately, the escape room built up to a 3 digit lock box where the students had to do some math:
Clue 1: Start with the total number of representatives in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Clue 2: Subtract the total number of senators in the U.S. Senate.
Clue 3: Subtract the number of the amendments that abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime.
Clue 4: Subtract the number of the amendment that granted citizenship rights and equal protection under the law to all persons born or naturalized in the United States.
Clue 5: Subtract the number of the amendment that reserves powers not delegated to the federal government to the states or the people.
It was an engaging, and awesome, last Monday of school.
I don’t often share any notes I get, but I keep everything in a basket, and I thought I would share some…
Moler's Musings 