Today was the gallery for our Thorne Rooms and they were spectacular! We were able to have parents join us in our viewing and students voted on five different categories of Thorne Rooms. I'll announce the winners next week!

Today we worked on our gallery plaque, which we'll present next week for our gallery day. We also worked on completing our Thorne Rooms. They are looking amazing! Keep working on them and make them awesome for next week! We'll have a gallery viewing and we'll be voting for our favorites as well!

Today we discussed balance puzzles! This ties to our story because Christina, the Duchess of Milan had an alchemist make her a special, magical potion. We learned that it is important for chemists to make sure they have balance in their chemicals. Balancing puzzles are fabulous for algebraic concepts such as unknown variables and equalities/inequalities. We spent the last half of the class working on our Thorne Rooms. These are looking fabulous! I can't wait to see the finished products on May 5th. Don't forget to sign up for the final "Room Escape" field trip on May 7th.

Read pages. 148-203

Today in class I went over our final project for the year---Create Your Own Thorne Room! You can find more information by clicking the link. Also, I wanted to let you know that the final "room escape" for this book will be held off campus! We'll be meeting at Knoxville Museum of Art on Saturday, May 7th from 11:30-1:00 (approx) for a fun adventure involving the Thorne Rooms at our own KMA! Younger siblings are welcome to attend, but a parent MUST accompany the students. This is NOT a drop off event. If you could fill out the linked form, I can have a better idea of numbers and plan the activity a bit more. Final numbers should be submitted by May 5th.

Read 91-147

DIY Furniture
More DIY Furniture
Even More DIY Furniture

Today we read the first chapter of Sixty-Eight Rooms in class and made a small, 8 page booklet as we read. Students drew Ruthie and Jack and even designed their own Thorne Rooms. If you would like to see all the 68 Thorne Rooms, you can watch a YouTube video that displays them all!

Today we finished up our room escape for The Book Scavenger! We started discussing the 68 Rooms (so excited to read this one!), which is our last book of the year! For HW, please read pages 1-44.

Today we started our room escape for The Book Scavenger. We'll keep working on this one next week. We'll also start our last book of the year next week, so make sure you get your copy of The 68 Rooms!

Today we played a game called Shelf Life. It was very fun and we will probably play this game again some day. We also worked on our maps of the setting of Book Scavenger. We will be doing our room escape after spring break, so students should finish their books over spring break. Also, try to get your copy of 68 Rooms over the break as well!

Maps and locations are often very important in books (especially in puzzle-solving books). For that reason, we worked with partners to create a map of San Francisco (the setting of the Book Scavenger). We'll need to continue working on these next week, but they are already off to a great start!

Today, we learned some new word games. We learned how to solve Hink Pinks, Anagrams, and Word Building. We also thought about our dream city like Emily does in Book Scavenger.

For HW: read to page 207.

Since Emily, our main character in The Book Scavenger loves word puzzles, we played Wordle in class today! We had so much fun! I challenged students to create a Wordle for me to solve. If you have some time this week, this could be a fun game to play together. Want to play more than once? Try Wordle Unlimited! We also read the first chapter of the Book Scavenger. For HW please read 69-120.

Today, we did a very fun activity involving a word search. Students had to find words related to The Book Scavenger in a word search. Then, they had to create a prediction about what they thought the book would be about using as many of the words as possible. There were 24 total words. So far, the highest word use in the prediction is 20! There will be a prize for the person that is able to use the most words.

For HW: Read pages 1-68 in Book Scavenger*

*This is the most challenging book we have done this year. It is fine with me if students want to read with a grown-up or listen to an audiobook.

Today we completed our room escape for the Pathfinders! It was a tough one, and missing two weeks put a damper on our momentum. Next week, we'll start reading The Book Scavenger, so try to bring your copy.

Today we started our room escape! It was a challenge, but the puzzles are supposed to be a challenge! It might help if students review some of the content we learned about before the break, specifically, phases of the moon and types of angles. Knowing this information will help them solve the puzzles easily!

Today, we completed an ugly Christmas sweater logic puzzle. This was fun, but pretty challenging for most students. You can find all sorts of Christmas logic puzzles for free online! This would be a great way to spend some time together during the holiday! When we return from break, we'll work do our Pathfinder's Room Escape and then we'll start our next book, which is The Book Scavenger by Jennifer Chambliss Bertman.

I hope you all have the happiest of holidays and I'm looking forward to solving mysteries with you in the New Year.

Today we learned about four types of angles (straight, right, acute, and obtuse). We also learned about the moon phases. We learned about all of these because the Pathfinder's Society using the moon to solve their mysteries and in the Merriwhether castle, mirrors and windows are used to create light at different angles.

Today we worked on spatial reasoning skills by building triad cube puzzles. We also played a laser reflective game, which is similar to how the light is reflected in the Merriwhether castle.
Before break, everyone learned how to play the game SET (it's pretty challenging). There is an online version that you can find here.

We continued our "tile" learning from last week. We worked in different groups to complete our symmetrical tiles from last week (they are coming along nicely). We also worked on matching memory mandalas and making mosaics. Finally, Dr. Rowe taught everyone a new game called SET (It was hard!).

Today we observed page 68 of our Pathfinder's book. In that panel, the characters are at Merriweather's house, and they notice some beautiful tiles. Although these tiles told stories, we worked on creating our own symmetrical tiles. We will finish these up next week and they will be absolutely beautiful.
For HW: please read chapters 4-6.

Today we worked on a variety of path puzzles. Since we are reading the Pathfinder's Society, we worked on a circular maze, a math path puzzle, a visual directional puzzle, and a logic path puzzle game (Rush Hour). We will continue to practice more path games (and they will probably show up in our room escape)!

To kick off our time together, we completed a Halloween logic puzzle, which was quite challenging for some. If you'd like to practice more logic puzzles, you can find some here.

We also started our study of The Mystery of the Moonlight Tower by learning some important graphic novel vocabulary words. We learned panels, tiers, gutters, emanata, bleeds, speech bubbles and thought bubbles. For homework this week, everyone should work on a comic. I sent home a comic page for everyone to illustrate their story. The panels should be full and colorful. Students should also include a speech bubble, thought bubble, bleed, and emanata.

Please read pages 1-20 for next week and complete the comic page.

We had a blast finishing up our room escape today! Joel, Emory, Jack, and Miles were our winners! They were able to figure out all the puzzles and determine the secret message! I will bring your prize next week! Speaking of next week, we'll start our next book, The Pathfinder's Society: Mystery of the Moon Tower, so bring your copy to class. We'll be discussing important concepts in a graphic novel and solving some puzzles (of course)!

Today we started our Room Escape! We had so much fun trying to solve puzzles and figure out which Coves and Locations to go to. We are all looking for a secret message and when we've figured out the secret message, teams can tell Dr. Rowe. The team that figures out the message first is the winning team! Have a great fall break and I'll see you when you return (we'll finish up our room escape then). Make sure you have our second book ready for reading when we return from break!

Today, we attempted to write in a variety of invisible ink. We were not very successful. We wrote in lemon juice, vinegar, milk, and white crayon and attempted to get the writing to show up when we added heat from a hair dryer. We could not make this happen. I even used a flame, which was a more accurate example of how the Revolutionary War spies would have deciphered those messages, but we still could not get the letters to show up very well. If you try this experiment at home, please let us know how it works out!

Finish up reading our Anna Strong book this week. Next week will be room escape week! Over fall break, students should get the next book on our syllabus as well (The Pathfinder's Society--The Mystery of the Moonlight Tower).

Today, we practiced more puzzles from Anna Strong to help us prepare for our room escape. For this week, try to finish up the book. We're going to begin room escapes next week, so students will need to have the information from the story to help them solve the puzzles and escape the room! We learned a new type of puzzle (a sliding puzzle) and we worked with pig pen and the Culper Code. We also had some practice with a wheel (cup) cipher.

My apologies for not posting the pages to be read last week!

We had a great day today! We're continuing to learn more and more types of spy puzzles, which will come in handy for our Room Escape! Today we did an ISpy code, cup puzzle (which is sort of like a Jefferson Wheel) and a word building puzzle. We also did more pig pen, of course!

For this week, please read to page 40 (if you have not already done so). If you have read to 40, you may continue on through the book. We will finish up the book by September 23rd and we will tentatively plan for our room escape on Sept 30th and October 7th.

Also for HW this week, finish the word building puzzle we started in class.

Today, we rotated stations to practice some detective and literacy skills! We especially had fun learning about Pig Pen Ciphers and Cardan Grille Ciphers.

Practice writing in Pig Pen this week! Watch this video for a refresher!

Read pages 1-20 of Anna Strong. Fold a piece of white paper into quarters and write the following vocabulary words (one on each box): Loyalist, livestock, bayonets, confront. Write the definition of each word and draw a picture to help you remember what each word means.

How many puzzles can you see/solve in the first 20 pages?

We had a great day today! I was so impressed with everyone's logic puzzle this week! I'm so proud of those of you who did your HW and tried to solve the puzzle. We solved the puzzle I posted to the class together and, in the process, we learned that it's o.k. to make mistakes and just take a guess sometimes! We can always go back and retry if we mess up!

Then we played a very fun game called STARE! This is a great game to play at home, so get your student detective to show you how to do it!

For HW this week, please research a bit about Anna Strong. Write a list of facts about her. We're going to start our book next week (so make sure you have that as well). We'll read a bit in class each week and then we'll read some at home, too.

8/19 First Day Activities-Procedures & Ice Breakers
HW: Make your own line-up! In class today, students completed a logic puzzle to identify the people in a drawing. For HW, students should draw their own line-up of 5-7 people in a specific scene (at the pool, beach, restaurant, amusement park, etc.). Make sure your characters have different types and colors of clothing (don't forget fun accessories like hats, sunglasses, scarves, backpacks, bags, and jewelry). Make sure your characters are neat and colorful with lots of details!

Then write out hints to help your classmates figure out who each person is! Need help? Check out this page for an example (but remember--NO COPYING)!

Check out the Sleuth & Solve Section below!

This class can be enrichment or academic! I have created literacy and cross-curricular workbooks to accompany each of our texts for this year. If you would like this course to count as your ELA spine, I strongly suggest using the workbooks. These are not required, but are a wonderful addition to support a multitude of reading, grammar, writing, and cross-curricular skills. Please reach out to me if you are interested and I will share more information with you!