Subject/Grade level: Reading, 7th grade

Unit topic: Analyzing informational text

Lesson Title: SALTY-P Escape Room
Estimated length of Lesson: 45 minutes
TEKS Standards: 7.10 Students analyze, make inferences and draw conclusions about
expository text and provide evidence from the text to support their understanding.

Learning Objectives: Students will be able to analyze an informational magazine article to find
the Authors Text structure, Audience, Language, Tone, year, and purpose, while working in a
collaborative group and incorporating the use of technology.

Academic Language: Setting, Tone, Authors purpose, text structure, point of view,
compare/contrast, cause/effect, description, sequence, chronological order.

Materials: Article “The Day the Sky Turned Black” By: By Lauren Tarshis and Bryan Brown
Published in the Junior Scholastics magazine, I-pads, near pod presentation, Riddles, and letters
to spell out: SALTY-P.

Instructional Procedures:

Before lesson: (Done the day before) Day one of the lesson, the students will individually read
the article, “The Day The Earth turned Black” and find the SALTY-P of the text (Structure,
author/audience, Language, Tone, Year, and Purpose). Students will annotate the text to better
understand what they are reading. Students can either use the online version of the text that can
also be modified to a lower reading level if necessary.

During Activity: Day 2 of the lesson, students will each be given an I-pad where they will use a
near pod document to collaboratively work together. The teacher will be seated in the middle
with the students, and will explain the rules:

They are “trapped” inside an escape room, and the only way out is to locate all the letters to spell
out SALTY-P. They will do this by working together to first find the letter S, which represents
text structure. They will be able to input their information on the near pod document. Students
will discuss what they found the text structure to be and what evidence they used. All students
must agree what text structure the author is using. Once they all agree, they will present the
information to the game master (the teacher). Once the game master agrees with the text
evidence, they will hand the students a riddle. This riddle will point the students to an area of the
classroom where the letters are hidden. The students will repeat this process until they find the
author/audience, the tone, language, year, and purpose of the text. Once they have located all
letters of SALTY-P, they will be given the key to escape the room.
After activity: Once, the students have located all the letters to spell put SALTY-P, the teacher
will hold a discussion with the class about what they learned with SALTY-P and how they can
use it to help them analyze expository text on the STAAR test and in every day texts such as
magazine, newspapers, and online articles.

Assessment: As an assessment, the students will be given a cause and effect quiz through near
pod where they will need to match each cause with its effect from the story.

The teacher will also be able to informally assess the students understanding of the content by
observing the conversation that the students are having as well as the answers they are inputting
on the near pod document.

Teacher will differentiate instruction by giving certain students who read at a lower reading
level, a slightly simplified version of the article. Scaffolding may be used when necessary to
guide students when they need to be pointed in the right direction. Some students may choose to
write their answers by hand or say them orally if they are not comfortable writing with an I-pad.

Riddles:

 I am the only one who is always awake, because I like to give people the hour and
minutes of the day. My two partners next to me, are always asleep.
Who has me?
 You’re standing in me at this very moment. I am your home. Your sweet voices, honor
me every morning.
Who has me?
 I am a triplet. You can sit on me, but be careful, you might roll away.
Who has me?
 Numbers, Numbers, and more numbers. I can’t get enough! Feed me the problem and I
will repay you with the solution.
Who has me?
 “aaaachhooo!”
Once I hear this sound, I know you’re coming after me next.
Who has me?

 You’re supposed to feed me your waste, but often times you leave my scrumptious food
on the floor around you, and leave me hungry.