Ecology Escape Room

Description

Have you considered using learning stations or even an ecology escape room with your students? This is an ecology activity that is ideal for reviewing before an exam. Includes an ecological succession card sort, trophic levels questions, and text covering the relationships between species with follow up questions.

In this scenario, students are put into groups and given the following information. Your team has just arrived on a volcanic island that is thought to be approximately 30 years old. You have been asked to determine the pioneer species and create a timeline of species entering the island. This research is hoped to prepare for natural disasters in the future. Because you knew this would a be a difficult task, you told the helicopter pilot to only come once the encrypted message had been solved. Can you and your team uncover the mysteries of this isolated island?

This is a 4 part escape room that can be adapted for your students into anything from seat work to a full blown escape room experience. Depending on your time and your classes.

4 tasks:

1. Students are asked to sort clues into one of two categories: primary or secondary successions
2. Students are given a list of social media posts and asked to completed the sentences with terms associated with trophic levels of an ecosystem
3. Students are provided an informational text on relationships between species and asked to answer questions using the provided text.
4. Students use the answers in the previous tasks to break the code and solve the encrypted message.