Escape the Music Room
What?
Because of the snow days this week, I only had one cycle day of classes. I was supposed to be wrapping up our musical theatre unit for all of the grades and then introducing the next unit, including recorders, this week, and the classes that I saw already had their wrap up and intro. If I moved ahead with them, they would be two weeks ahead of the other classes. So I spent some of cold days working on an Escape Room style game that helped review some music skills and introduced our composer for the month of February. I bought 5 blank puzzles from a craft store and drew a different mystery rhythm on each one. I also included an additional musical symbol for the next step. On the back, I put the mystery rhythm on each puzzle piece. I put 4 pieces from each puzzle in a small bag and then all of the other puzzles into a big bag, in order to make sure that students groups would be mostly equal. When students came in, the room was dark with spy music playing. I had created a slideshow with step by step instructions that was on the screen. I handed each student a puzzle piece that had their mystery rhythm on it. The first step was to find their secret agent team- the ones that had matching puzzle pieces. Next, I had a pile of puzzle pieces on the floor- five puzzles total, one for each spy group. They had to one at time go find a piece and bring it back to their group. The members that weren't getting pieces were supposed to be putting the puzzles together. When their puzzles were completed, they had to figure out what the secret music symbol on their puzzle was. For first and second grade, I drew the symbol of each puzzle on the board and put the next clue underneath it with the name of the symbol. For 4th and 5th grade, they had to figure out the name of the symbol and then go hunt around the room for their clue. If they brought me the wrong clue, I would send them to put it back and have them keep searching. After each team brought me the correct clue, they received their worksheet that talked about the composer of the month. 1st and 2nd grade read a few paragraphs outloud as a team and then colored a picture of the composer. Their key to get out of music was the completed picture. 4th and 5th grade had to use a cipher to figure out the missing letters in the paragraphs. Then they brought me the worksheet and told me who the mystery composer is. They then each received a blue post it note and had to write down one fact about them, along with a rating for the activity, based on three stars. That was their key to get out. When each group had completed the escape room, we briefly discussed Scott Joplin, our composer of the month and listened to one of his more famous pieces, The Entertainer.
So what?
So many great things happened here. Outside of the music skills, students worked collaboratively, exercised spatial reasoning, fine motor skills and gross motor skills. They used problem solving, matching and reading out loud. They worked on pattern recognition and recall as well. Musically, they were repeating their rhythm continually while they looked for matching puzzle pieces, as well as reading other rhythms. They learned about common musical symbols while looking for their clues and then also connected to a composer. Because February is Black History Month, using Scott Joplin also connected them to some of their social studies work.
Now what?
I originally was only going to use this activity for the one day, but it turned out better than I had anticipated. This particular cycle day has a compliment of classes that are really challenging with behaviors, but those behaviors were significantly decreased. It was engaging for almost every student and students were particularly excited about the spy music playing in the background- several fourth and fifth graders commented that it really added to the atmosphere and helped them feel excited about what they were doing. Because of the success, I'm going to do that with my other classes this week as well, except for 4th grade because they have to have their introduction to recorders done this week (although we may still try to sneak it in). I am going to be taking classes in a slightly different direction as a result- we will be spending more time studying Scott Joplin, incorporating a lot of movement activities, including parachute, which is a favorite. Overall, this activity really encouraged me to look outside of the box. I've been frustrated because I have very few resources right now- our most recent curriculum is from 2000- and I've had to invest a lot of my own money into creating resources. This one was relatively inexpensive (only $5 for the blank puzzles and the couple hours I spent drawing them) and it was a big hit. Students related to it well- many of the older students had done escape rooms before- and it was exciting. This helped get some creative juices flowing for me, which is good because January was leaving me feeling very stagnant.
Because of the snow days this week, I only had one cycle day of classes. I was supposed to be wrapping up our musical theatre unit for all of the grades and then introducing the next unit, including recorders, this week, and the classes that I saw already had their wrap up and intro. If I moved ahead with them, they would be two weeks ahead of the other classes. So I spent some of cold days working on an Escape Room style game that helped review some music skills and introduced our composer for the month of February. I bought 5 blank puzzles from a craft store and drew a different mystery rhythm on each one. I also included an additional musical symbol for the next step. On the back, I put the mystery rhythm on each puzzle piece. I put 4 pieces from each puzzle in a small bag and then all of the other puzzles into a big bag, in order to make sure that students groups would be mostly equal. When students came in, the room was dark with spy music playing. I had created a slideshow with step by step instructions that was on the screen. I handed each student a puzzle piece that had their mystery rhythm on it. The first step was to find their secret agent team- the ones that had matching puzzle pieces. Next, I had a pile of puzzle pieces on the floor- five puzzles total, one for each spy group. They had to one at time go find a piece and bring it back to their group. The members that weren't getting pieces were supposed to be putting the puzzles together. When their puzzles were completed, they had to figure out what the secret music symbol on their puzzle was. For first and second grade, I drew the symbol of each puzzle on the board and put the next clue underneath it with the name of the symbol. For 4th and 5th grade, they had to figure out the name of the symbol and then go hunt around the room for their clue. If they brought me the wrong clue, I would send them to put it back and have them keep searching. After each team brought me the correct clue, they received their worksheet that talked about the composer of the month. 1st and 2nd grade read a few paragraphs outloud as a team and then colored a picture of the composer. Their key to get out of music was the completed picture. 4th and 5th grade had to use a cipher to figure out the missing letters in the paragraphs. Then they brought me the worksheet and told me who the mystery composer is. They then each received a blue post it note and had to write down one fact about them, along with a rating for the activity, based on three stars. That was their key to get out. When each group had completed the escape room, we briefly discussed Scott Joplin, our composer of the month and listened to one of his more famous pieces, The Entertainer.
So what?
So many great things happened here. Outside of the music skills, students worked collaboratively, exercised spatial reasoning, fine motor skills and gross motor skills. They used problem solving, matching and reading out loud. They worked on pattern recognition and recall as well. Musically, they were repeating their rhythm continually while they looked for matching puzzle pieces, as well as reading other rhythms. They learned about common musical symbols while looking for their clues and then also connected to a composer. Because February is Black History Month, using Scott Joplin also connected them to some of their social studies work.
Now what?
I originally was only going to use this activity for the one day, but it turned out better than I had anticipated. This particular cycle day has a compliment of classes that are really challenging with behaviors, but those behaviors were significantly decreased. It was engaging for almost every student and students were particularly excited about the spy music playing in the background- several fourth and fifth graders commented that it really added to the atmosphere and helped them feel excited about what they were doing. Because of the success, I'm going to do that with my other classes this week as well, except for 4th grade because they have to have their introduction to recorders done this week (although we may still try to sneak it in). I am going to be taking classes in a slightly different direction as a result- we will be spending more time studying Scott Joplin, incorporating a lot of movement activities, including parachute, which is a favorite. Overall, this activity really encouraged me to look outside of the box. I've been frustrated because I have very few resources right now- our most recent curriculum is from 2000- and I've had to invest a lot of my own money into creating resources. This one was relatively inexpensive (only $5 for the blank puzzles and the couple hours I spent drawing them) and it was a big hit. Students related to it well- many of the older students had done escape rooms before- and it was exciting. This helped get some creative juices flowing for me, which is good because January was leaving me feeling very stagnant.
You did a lot of prep work to set up an escape room activity for your classes who would receive some "extra" class time due to the school closings for cold weather. The activity involved teams working to discover the meaning of music symbols by putting together puzzles and looking for clues. They also discovered the name of a famous composers by completing a worksheet together.
ReplyDeleteAs you think about all the ways this activity furthered the learning of your students, which one was the most important to you? Why is this so important/how does it align with some of your belifs about music education?