Dracula Escape Room: ESOL Reading Group
ICON: a person or thing regarded as a representative symbol or as worthy of veneration.
The word ICON is bandied about a lot these days but for certain characters and works of Fiction, this still holds true. Bram Stoker’s Dracula is an icon of literature. This is one of the reasons for choosing to read this novel in the months of September and October with the ESOL Reading Groups at the College. Having a coastal Yorkshire connection helps as well.
All of the Reading Groups read the novel and enjoyed the ‘depraved and horrific’ story. It culminated with a tailor-made novel-themed Escape Room in the College’s new Immersive Room on the ground floor of DHB. This timed nicely being just before breaking up for the Half-Term and Hallowe’en.
The Immersive Room is available for all staff, teachers and classes to use in all of it’s digital brilliance. Training is available from the GoDigital team to help maximise the experience for students and staff.
There is 1 VERY large screen with integrated capabilities, 2 other ones opposite and a further 2 smaller ones at the side for touch-sensitive activities and interactive work for the students. They are connected to the internet but you can also connect to a laptop to use your own material (Powerpoint, Miro,etc.). The versatile tables and chairs can be arranged however you want to use the room to full effect.
For our Dracula Escape Room, we arranged the tables in a U shape around the (cardboard) coffin complete with (fake) lilies on the coffin. This arrangement was perfect for your purposes. This helped to reinforce the atmosphere of the room to match the scary, creepy, thrilling mood of the book. This configuration also helped the students to be able to run up to the board to do the activities on the interactive screens.
The students were challenged to ‘find Dracula’ by completing a series of grammar and vocabulary-based puzzles. Those activities complimented the work we had been doing in the Skills Hub on second floor, in our weekly Reading Group sessions. These activities were very interactive on the 2 small screens at the side of the impressive large wall screen. There were ‘click and drag’ puzzles as well as writing on the board with fingers. They were challenged to conjugate Past Simple verbs in keeping with their comprehension of the story of the novel.
An extra element to this blended learning Escape Room experience were a series of historic inventions created after the novel’s 1875 setting. This added another dimension rather than just literature but historical context about what existed, and what didn’t exist, back when the story was set. The students enjoyed thinking about the progress of advances from the invention of the car to instant coffee to Wikipedia.
The final puzzle had the students summarise the story which linked to a combination lock allowing the students to open the (cardboard) coffin to find Dracula. He wasn’t there so The Undead is still loose. Beware!
The students were Entry 2 and 3 as well as Level 1. Some of the puzzles seemed more difficult than others so we were there to help, support and reinforce the Grammar Rules, etc. There was great interaction and excitement using the facilities in the Immersive Room. Dividing the group into 2 is always good to inject a sense of competition and to have a race to finish the puzzles. This aspect made it competitive but quite fun as well. The end result was fun, challenging and a good way to end before the Half Term Break.
The Escape Room was a celebration to reward students’ efforts. Doing this in the Immersive Room also differed from the Reading Group sessions on the second floor Skills Hub where we actually read the novel. This emboldened us to continue to put the effort into this as it was worthwhile and well received. We are learning more and more each time and they are getting better and better.
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