Escape Room: Thermal Energy NGSS MS PS-3-4 "Bake Sale"

This is an escape room or series of puzzle challenges designed to have students practice critical thinking skills and apply science concepts related to thermal energy from NGSS MS-PS-3-4. Comes with 6 puzzles but only 4 are required for the story line so you can customize the game length to meet your students' skills and available time.

1. Students will match vocabulary terms (conduction, convection, radiation, thermal insulator, thermal conductor and heat)
2. Identify different types of thermal energy transfer from descriptions and images (conduction, convection and radiation) to solve a maze.
3. Read a data table to help answer questions about thermal properties
4. Solve a logic puzzle.
5. Optional puzzle stations temperature conversion calculations
6. Optional puzzle station with a paper puzzle to assemble.

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)

Colored pencils, crayons or markers in Red, Green and Orange for challenge #4

Calculator (optional) for Challenge #2 and #5

Challenge #6 (puzzle assembly) does require teacher to precut the puzzle into strips ahead of time for each group.

OPTIONAL Stations and Challenges

•Hint cards p 10 to use to pass hints to teams that need help

•Cool Down Station

–Danger of Overcooking Cards p11-12 that can be used to slow down students or to penalize guessing.(Optional)

–Cool Down Poster to show students where to stand while in cool down or 5 minute time out.

•Sous Chef Prep STATION (p20-21) Can be used in several different ways.

–As a penalty station for teams to visit if they guess incorrectly on one of the challenges. They must solve two of the 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

–As a bonus station for early finishers to work on if you allow more than one group to finish/win

•Recipe Reconstruction Puzzle (p25-26 )Can be used in several different ways.

–As a regular station that is part of the challenge that students must work through increasing the number of challenges

–As a bonus station for early finishers to work on if you allow more than one group to finish/win

–The puzzle has two different levels of difficulty. One is to just use page 26 and cut out along the lines. The harder version is to print out p 25 and 26 back to back so that the recipe is at flipped 180 degrees on the back side of the page before you cut the strips. This makes it much harder to determine which side of the strips to use to put together the recipe. Students will have to realize that they need to make sure that every strip has a different part of the recipe on it before assembling the puzzle..

Contents

• Cover and TOU (3 pages)
• Teacher Notes (3 pages)
• “I Won” and “I Lost” posters (2 each, total of 4 pages)
• Hint Card Template (Optional but is useful to give support to struggling groups)(1 page)
• “You’re in danger of overcooking” Cards and Cool Down Area Poster (Optional but used to give group members a 5 minute “time out” for guessing, not sharing etc.)(2 pages)
• Escape Room Challenge Task Sheets (7 pages)
• Optional Sous Chef Station (2 pages)
• Team Recording Form two versions (2 pages)
• Team Challenge Handouts (make one copy per team, per class) (4 pages)
• Optional Recipe Reconstruction Puzzle Station (need one copy per team, precut the strips and place into envelopes before starting) (2 pages)
• Answer Keys for recording form, maze, logic puzzle and assembly puzzle (4 pages)