There are lots of games and activities you can use to review the Virginia Studies SOLs (Standards of Learning). But, my Virginia Studies Escape Rooms are the review activities that my students beg for at the end of every unit.
Escape rooms are the best Virginia Studies review activity because they—
- help students review the Virginia Studies SOLs in a meaningful way
- incorporate math, ELA, and critical thinking skills
- keep students engaged
- require almost no prep work for the teacher
Let’s take a closer look at my Virginia Studies escape rooms and how they can help your students master the Virginia Studies SOLs!
Fun Escape Room Theme
Even the students who are “too cool for school” will buy into an escape room with a fun theme!
In all of my Virginia Studies escape rooms, students use a time machine to travel back in time and learn about Virginia’s history. But, while on their time travel mission, the time machine malfunctions.
The only way to fix the time machine is to complete a series of challenges that are related to the Virginia Studies SOLs.
Virginia Studies Escape Room Activities
In addition to a fun theme, an escape room should have a variety of Virginia Studies review activities that challenge students and keep them engaged as they review the Virginia Studies SOLs.
All of my Virginia Studies escape rooms feature 5-7 activities. Some of the activities you may see throughout the SOL-aligned escape rooms include—
Decoding Virginia History and Facts
For many of the escape room activities, students use a key to decode historical information, famous quotes by Virginians, and locations on maps. For an additional challenge, some symbols may be missing from a key, which requires students to make inferences about what symbols may represent.
Pigpen Ciphers
Pigpen ciphers are another fun Virginia Studies review activity that requires students to decode information. Pigpen ciphers create an additional challenge beyond using a simple key to decode people, places, and events in Virginia history.
Math Challenges
I love finding ways to incorporate math skills into my escape rooms. Most of the Virginia Studies escape rooms include an activity where students read through a list of facts about Virginia and determine which facts are true or false. Each answer corresponds with a number. After going through the list, students add all of the numbers together to find a total.
Map Activities
Using maps to identify locations and describe geography is an important part of the Virginia Studies SOLs. Many of the Virginia Studies escape rooms incorporate map skills. Map activities include using a key to identify locations, solving riddles related to geographic information, and matching images of Virginia’s regions to their descriptions.
Puzzles
Throughout the Virginia Studies escape rooms, there are a variety of puzzle activities. Some puzzles require students to match a term to its definition. Then, use letters and numbers on the puzzle pieces to unlock a code.
Other types of puzzles require students to assemble a puzzle of a famous Virginian and find hidden clues in the image.
How to Use These Escape Rooms
An escape room is a Virginia Studies review activity that all your students will look forward to and beg to do more of. I like to use a Virginia Studies escape room to review information at the end of a unit or before SOL testing at the end of the school year.
I set up each activity at stations around the classroom. I find it is best to put a few copies of each activity at the stations so that several students can easily work at the same time. It may be helpful to also provide scratch paper at the station in case students need to solve a math problem or take notes to solve a riddle or puzzle.
Each student will receive a worksheet at the beginning of the activity. They will take the worksheet with them to each station and record their answers on the worksheet.
I like to make these classroom escape rooms self-checking. I put the answer cards in an envelope at each station. Then, students can check their answers independently after completing each station.
If you would prefer, you can also review the answers as a class at the end of the activity or collect the student response worksheets for a grade.
Where to Find Virginia Studies Escape Rooms
All of my escape rooms are available in my store. You can find a Virginia Studies review activity for each of the following SOLs:
- Virginia Regions Escape Room
- Virginia Indians Escape Room
- Jamestown Escape Room
- Colonial Virginia Escape Room
- Virginia in the American Revolution Escape Room
- A New Nation Escape Room
- Civil War Escape Room
- Reconstruction Escape Room
- WWI & WWII Escape Room
- Civil Rights Movement in Virginia Escape Room
- Mother of Presidents Escape Room
- Virginia’s Economy Escape Room
All of these escape rooms are also bundled together for a discounted price.
The Virginia Teacher Club® is a one-of-a-kind program for upper elementary teachers in Virginia. Members receive instant access to a curriculum library of SOL-aligned math, science, social studies, and ELA resources. There are lesson plans, games, assessments, passages, digital activities, and more for EVERY SOL. By using the Virginia Teacher Club®, our members save hours of planning time every month and have access to high-quality, SOL-aligned resources that students love.
CLICK HERE to join the waitlist and be the first to know when the Virginia Teacher Club® reopens for new members.
