Spotlight: Transitive Factors
Escape Room Activity Enhances Engagement in Spanish Study
By Leonor Brenes
Why create an escape room for a seventh-grade language class?
The idea came from the transitive factors research by Reichert and Hawley( 2010). In this research, they suggest that lessons involving transitive factors such as games, teamwork, and competition, creating products and incorporating some element of surprise, will engage boys’ attention, sustain their concentration, and result in superior performance. An escape room activity not only incorporated all these factors effectively but also reinforced some strong values we believe are essential for our students’ growth, such as collaboration, perseverance, curiosity, and responsibility.
When creating this activity, I had clear learning goals. Our grammar focus at the time was the past tense, so I designed tasks that would allow students to practice reading in that tense. Another objective was to help them develop their reading skills by identifying cognates and family words, especially by using context rather than focusing on individual words. The timed nature of the escape room encouraged students to scan the text for general understanding instead of fixating on single words. Additionally, since they needed to answer questions correctly to advance, the structure of the activity itself gave them immediate feedback about their comprehension. As a culminating activity, students created their own escape rooms in which they demonstrated their knowledge of the language, as well as creativity and critical thinking.
The storyline
I thought it was important to create a story that the students could relate to; a tale that made them feel comfortable while still challenging them and sparking their curiosity. The storyline tells how a group of students got trapped at Saint David’ s. The ghost of the school reveals that something similar happened to other students back in 1951, and the only way to escape is by using their knowledge of the subjects.
I also wanted this activity to be interdisciplinary, so I collaborated with other teachers and gathered questions from different subjects the students were studying at the time to create the challenges. I then translated these questions into Spanish, and students were required to answer using only an online dictionary( WordReference). The challenges were presented in various formats, including multiple-choice, matching, and question-and-answer activities.