I was feeling pretty good about myself at this point. It was pretty easy to take bits and pieces from The King’s Road campaign and embellish a little.
But, now it was time to put in actual content. My plan was to have students solve problems related to their current unit of study in each Side Quest. I downloaded an activity called Masked Mathematician from Clark Creative Education. I didn’t use it outright but used the puzzle idea. The page had 12 problems. As students complete the problems, they collect letters. After they have all 12 letters, they cross those letters out to reveal a message.
My struggle was how to translate this into exploring the Garrison and how I would use a map. As I searched for maps, I would find some similar to the one below and try to strain my brain into figuring out how to make that translate to a unit of study.
I can’t even figure out where the door is to get into a room on that map.
I just decided I would have to just create my own map instead of trying to fit content into a pre-made map. Students wouldn’t see it, but I needed it to keep me organized and structured. I’ll post the map later so you can see how it all fits together.
In the Garrison
Students have to solve four of the 12 questions to escape the Room A. Here is an example of one of the questions. I left this quiz open for multiple attempts and let students see their answers, but I didn’t check the box to show correct answers. If they didn’t collect the right clues, they would have to come back and try again.
After having answered four questions in Room A and then four questions in Room B, I decided to throw in an encounter and some choice.
If students choose to wake the wolf, then they are taken to a new module with a mastery path. If students choose to just go into Room C, they skip the wolf module and continue the adventure. Here is the module structure:
Wolf Encounter
If students chose to wake the wolf, this would take them to a quiz. They answer the question and if they get it correct, they earn XP. If they get it wrong, then they don’t get the additional XP. The quiz, then, is set for one attempt and the question students have to answer is more challenging than what they may have seen previously. The quiz is the “trigger” for the MasterPath.
If students answer correctly…
If students answer incorrectly…
I didn’t think it would be a good idea for the wolf to run by and tear of an arm, so I kept it low-key.
Here is the MasteryPath setup:
After the encounter, students are still able to continue on the path and find their last four clues in Room C. If students initially choose not to wake the wolf, they still have the option to do that later if they look at the modules. It is an extra math problem I want them to attempt, so whether they do it by choosing to wake the wolf or by noticing it later to try to earn more XP, my evil plan still worked: they are doing math.