Escape Room: NGSS MS PS-3 "Haunted School House Hunters"

This is a Halloween Themed Escape Room designed to have students practice critical thinking skills and apply concepts from NGSS MS-PS-3 and NGSS SEP analyzing data.

Students will

• identify different types of energy (Thermal, Sound, Chemical, Nuclear, Gravitational and Electrical)
• Create a graph from a data table to identify the outlier and draw in a line of best fit to predict a unknown value
• Answer questions about potential and kinetic energy from diagrams and quantitatively (have to determine the new amount of Kinetic Energy if the Mass is halved or doubled while the speed stays the same or if the speed doubles, while the mass stays the same)
• Describe the types of energy transformation present in 4 different images containing examples of :Electrical, Thermal, Chemical, Radiant, Sound, and Mechanical energy

There are 4 required challenges and one optional challenge called a "recharging station" that can be used in several different ways.

Recharging Station can be used:

–As a penalty station for teams to visit if they guess incorrectly on one of the challenges. They must solve two of the kinetic or potential energy formula math problems to return to the game. There are four problems to choose from so teams can make two mistakes before being eliminated

–As a regular station that is part of the challenge that students must work through increasing the challenges from 4 to 5 for longer class periods or more advanced groups of students.

Should take about 20-30 minutes to set up depending on total number of groups/class periods. Most challenges are copy and go.

One pair of scissors needed per group (for challenge #1)

Calculator (optional) for Challenge #3

Challenge #4 (puzzle assembly) does require teacher to precut the puzzle into 24 strips ahead of time for each group.

Contents

Teacher Notes (2 pages)

You’ve Been Ghosted Cards (1 page)

Answer Key (1 page)

“I Won” and “I Lost” posters (4 pages)

Hint Card Template (1 page)

Escape Room Challenge Task Sheets (6 pages)

Team Recording form (2 versions depending on if you want to include KE and PE calculations) (1 page each, total of 2 pages)

Team Challenge Handouts (3 pages)

Puzzle pieces (1 page)- will need to cut out ahead of time.