I can't believe half of our school year is almost over. Doesn't it go by in a blink? I have one more day of school tomorrow, and I am just a bit jealous of all those school districts that ended their semester on Friday. However, tomorrow will go just as quickly as today. Unfortunately, that means the whole break will do the same, but I am getting ahead of myself.
Let's talk "Mystery Boxes." That is just an easier title for BreakOut EDU. Last year I started creating a breakout box for the library each month. Last year I took most of my ideas from the "lock of the day," which is a part of the BreakOut EDU platform. It's usually a one lock problem, and mostly digital. I just recreated that problem with a physical box and placed that box in the library. I always have books in the mystery box along with some candy or stickers. To be honest, it didn't go as I had imagined it. Most of the mystery box enthusiasts solved the problem and opened the box at the beginning of the month, and then the box stayed on the table (collecting dust) for the rest of the month. Despite that less than stellar debut, I decided to repeat the activity this year.
This year I have been very strategic with the breakout box. Up until December, I still only did one problem per month. I also tied it to our district Vision 2030 guiding statements, the one that particularly goes with Algebra. I was trying to decide how to support math in the library and decided to create math breakout box problems. In addition, I also started advertising on the morning announcements and on social media. The results are in, and the mystery box is way more popular this year. In fact, I have an office aide who loves them so much, she created an alternate problem for December. That made everyone happy. They were able to break open the mystery box twice this month. Once by solving a math problem and again by decoding the secret word. We will probably continue the 2 boxes a month now that I have a helper.
Here are the mystery box problems for December. Mine is the green one, and it was up from Dec 1 - 9. When the students solve the last equation, that is the combination to the lock. Then the white one came from my student, and it started on Dec 12 and will be running until tomorrow, Dec. 20th. When the students find out what letters they need, they rearrange them to spell out a Christmas word, and then those letters correspond to a number from the chart. Those numbers are the combination to open the lock.
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