Description
The Famous Failures (Growth Mindset) Escape Room will take students on a secret mission around the classroom, reading comprehension passages, and answering questions! This escape room has students decode interesting facts about the success and failures of Katy Perry, George Lucas, Mark Cuban and Bill Gates.
Perfect Back to School activity to promote a positive mindset, talk about failures, determination and success, and start the year off on a good note.
The Famous Failures Escape Room is a great reading comprehension activity with a twist of fun that has students deciphering codes. The codes include ciphers, morse code, cryptograms, Polybius squares, and a final 4 digit code based on the decoders/clues.
What’s Included?
- 4 Reading Passages
- 4 Puzzle Phrases to Decode
- 4 Decoders
- 4 Differentiated Decoders
- 10 Multiple Choice Questions
- Teacher Instructions
- Answer Key
- Hint Guides – How To Decode
- Completion Signs
Watch the video or click on the preview button to take a closer look at everything included!
Skills Used:
- Reading Comprehension
- Critical Thinking
- Peer Collaboration
- Problem Solving
To prevent students from simply decoding the puzzles, ALL questions need to be answered correctly in order to solve the final code. This ensures understanding!
Benefits of Use:
- No Prep
- Print and Go
- Cross-Curricular
- Highly Engaging
- No Locks Needed
- No silly envelopes to stuff
- No fancy shapes to cut out
Give students a chance to decode puzzles, move around the room, and read passages, all while actively learning! Students will work in pairs (or individually) and race against the clock. A friendly competition always increases engagement. No prior knowledge is needed. Each code will reveal interesting facts about the topic.
Puzzle Types:
- Cryptogram
- Morse Code
- PigPen Cipher
- Polybius Square
Options for Use:
- Anticipatory Sets
- Unit Review
- Early Finishers
- Gallery Walk
- Stations
- Sub Plans
- Rewards
Click HERE to grab a F-R-E-E Color by Number Activity!
»»» Thinktivity™ Reading Passages : Click HERE
»»» Comprehension Challenge and CSI Spy Mystery: Click HERE
»»» Printable ESCAPE ROOMS: Click HERE
»»» Text Marking Detective: Click HERE
»»» Scavenger Hunts: Click HERE
»»» Digital Secret Message Activities: Click HERE
»»» Puzzle Breakouts: Click HERE
»»» Interactive Google Slides™: Click HERE
»»» Digital ESCAPE ROOMS: Click HERE
»»» Color by Number – Text Marking: Click HERE
»»» Digital Reading Passages: Click HERE
»»» Task Card Review Games: Click HERE
»»» Interactive Game Boards: Click HERE
»»» Reading Passages and Text Marking: Click HERE
»»» Back to School: Click HERE
»»» Collaborative Posters: Click HERE
»»» Digital Interactive Notebooks: Click HERE
»»» Grades 3 and 4 Escape Rooms: Click HERE
Copyright Information : © Think Tank Teacher LLC. Please note – all material included in this resource belongs to Think Tank Teacher LLC. By purchasing, you have a license to use the material but you do not own the material. You may not upload any portion of this resource to the internet in any format, including school/personal websites or network drives unless the site is password protected and can only be accessed by students, not other teachers or anyone else on the internet.
Kellie R. –
This was exactly what I was looking for. Thank you!
Zandile C. –
My students enjoyed breaking out of this escape room
Julie Y. –
The escape room was great, but clue 1 was very tough for all my students to figure out.
Kelly S. –
This resource was so great for my students! It was user friendly and kept them engaged.
Zimm –
This resource is amazing. I cannot wait to use it with my students as I teach and encourage them to have a growth mindset.
The Barrel Racing Teacher –
My students loved this activity and it was a very useful resource in my classroom for both small group and whole group instruction.
Sandy M. –
My students really enjoyed this activity. I will be using it again this year.
Melissa Guerra –
My students enjoyed this activity however make sure you group the children up with mixed levels. I had many students who found it very difficult.
Tiffany M. –
Continuing to impress upon students that failure isn’t the end is so important. This is a great way to show that things can swing positively if you just keep trying!
Meghan Schwartz –
This resource was easy to set up and implement in my classroom. The students were able to work collaboratively to identify the clues and think critically to escape! It was a perfect culminating activity to my failure and success unit.
Mandy P. –
This was a fun escape challenge for middle schoolers. It was challenging, but not overly so and they enjoyed it. It’s also easy to put together.
Megan S. –
My students really enjoyed this activity. I used it to build confidence before state testing and everyone stayed really engaged and envolved.
Carrie M. –
My 5th grade (advanced) students had a fantastic time with this activity. They were very interested in learning more about people they are already familiar with!
Stacey L. –
My 5th graders were fully engaged with this Famous Failures Escape Room! It was a fun and challenging way to reinforce reading comprehension and social studies content. Easy to set up and a great collaborative activity! I always appreciate how perfect Think Tank activities are for my fifth graders!
Adam M. –
My students were engaged the entire time! Really enjoyed this!
Erin M. –
I loved how engaging this is for my students. It was a great connection to our inventors unit as well as SEL growth mindset.
Jennifer A. –
I love to use Escape Rooms to have students eagerly work on more problems than they normally would, all because there is a challenge involved. This did push them because they had to think outside the box in order to figure out some of the codes. So I often repeated the instructions, but that is just the make-up of my class this year. This was a great hour or so of focused attention, with interesting subject matter, to add to our reading rotation.
The Shark Scholar –
My students had a lot of fun with this! It made for an engaging lesson.
ami R. –
Great resource for use in my middle school classroom.
Shawna W. –
Great beginning of the year activity to use reading skills and also teach progress over perfection.