Fifth grade students enjoyed an interdisciplinary escape room in their math and history classes last week. Students were first presented with a box that had four locks that they needed to break. They were then presented with a smaller box with one lock that contained materials needed to solve some of the locks on the larger box.
“Students used fractions and operations from math class and knowledge of ancient Egypt from their history class to work together to solve challenges like researching heights of pyramids and solving math problems written in the Mayan number system,” said Amy Scheer, who teaches 5th-grade math.
The locks were decoded by solving order of operation and fraction problems written in the Mayan number system. They also had to use a black light to read invisible ink on hieroglyphs and then use a logic puzzle to decode the writing.
Lastly, students had to work together with their team members to meet the common goal of unlocking their boxes, in which all were successful!
